LIBRARY OF. CONGRESS. 

1^ff^ 

Cliap..w.-. Copyright No* 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



THE 

PROBLEM of FINAL DESTINY 



STUDIED IN THE LIGHT OF 
REVISED THEOLOGICAL STATEMENT 



BY 

WILLIAM B. BROWN, D.D. 

Pastor-Emeritus of the First Congregational Church, Newark, N. J. 



" God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself."— St. Paul. 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS WHITTAKER 
2 & 3 Bible House 
1900 



5839 



TWO COriLi r*z£CElVBLD« 

Library 0 f Con r rtt% 
Office of thf 

<HJN ! 4 19Q0 

BegUttr of Copyrtfkt& 



SECOND COPY. 



Copyright, 1900 
By William B. Brown 



ERRATA 



Page 19— line 12— for " Fifth " read " Sixth. 



126 
128 
244 
253 
273 
292 



33— for " to " read " of." 

33 — semicolon for period. 

16— for " Saducees " read " Sadducees." 

21 — for " tone on" read "Aioneon" 

2 — for " escatological " read " eschatological." 

1— for " cause " read " course." 



EXPLANATORY. 



On entering the Christian ministry, many years ago, 
I accepted, with but little protest, that system of doc- 
trines commonly known as Evangelical. I have been 
in the pastorate forty years, and considerably more than 
half of that time in connection with one church. Having 
naturally a progressive temperament, I became inter- 
ested in scientific and related studies that were more or 
less connected with theological conclusions. It was not 
till far into the seventh decade of the now closing century 
that my moral nature began to feel a slight recoil from 
some of the conclusions that previously had been un- 
doubted. One chief point of misgiving related to the 
traditional doctrine of eternal punishment. Evidently, I 
was not preaching that doctrine in its literal and sen- 
suous form as in former years. I saw, — if none could ever 
be saved except those who,un this life, believed in Jesus 
Christ, and consciously accepted His atoning sacrifice as 
the only condition of forgiveness and eternal life, — 
that then, the great proportion of all the people now 
living, or who ever have lived (infants and imbeciles ex- 
cepted) must go into a place of eternal torment. When 
I considered the circumstances under which man comes 
into this world, also, his environment and the small op- 
portunities that are often given him, I was obliged to 
shut my eyes and turn from the awful vision. I knew 
the arguments in support of the doctrine, but they did 
not satisfy. My fuller comprehension of God, revealed 
in Jesus Christ, as a loving Father, and a clearer view 
of the intuitive principles of right, honor and justice 



8 



EXPLANATORY. 



that the Creator, with His own hand, has written in the 
moral natures of all men, and that must be obligatory 
upon all moral beings, God Himself included, compelled 
me to revolt against the creedal theory of eternal punish- 
ment. 

And yet, I had nothing positive to substitute in its 
place. I was not then, and am not now, a Universalist, 
because I have no certainty that all men will be saved 
in any full sense of that term. For similar reasons I 
am not able to accept the doctrine of complete and uni- 
versal restoration. And, as for the hypothesis of condi- 
tional immortality, it appears to rest on bad logic and 
worse exegesis. If I gave up the traditional theory, it 
must be for better reasons than I yet fully saw ; and be- 
sides, what positive doctrine was there to put in its place? 
It is not possible for an earnest mind to rest upon nega- 
tions. One must stand on solid rock or sink in the 
mire. A preacher must preach positive convictions or 
his self-respect and power are gone. 

I must now pass over a period of about ten years, 
during which other urgent duties and the necessity for 
foreign travel interrupted this whole course of study. 
At length an event took place, calling here for no ex- 
planation, that desolated my home, but not my life, and 
changed my whole current of thought, making the affairs 
of this world of but small value in comparison with 
what is to go on in what Hiawatha calls the "Land of 
the Hereafter/' Then, this old question of endless pun- 
ishment, by positive infliction, from God's direct hand, 
came back to me, and seemed to demand solution. My 
first step was to set a double row of buoys along the 
channel of thought, outside of which I could not go; 
for, in all my thinking, I had never for a moment ques- 



EXPLANATORY. 



9 



tioned any of the cardinal facts or principles of the real 
Gospel of Christ. Indeed, these had grown in interest 
and in my confidence continually. 

My next step was to ask myself just how far I had ad- 
vanced in the direction of rejecting the traditional theory 
of eternal punishment^ and found that I was able to for- 
mulate the following statements as probably true : 

1. That God, as an honorable, just and loving Father, 
would and must do for everv soul that He brings into 
this world all that infinite wisdom and infinite power, 
controlled by perfect love, can do for its eternal well- 
being. 

2. That as regards countless millions of the human 
race, their earthly condition is such as to afford them 
no fair and reasonable opportunity to be saved on what 
are understood to be Gospel grounds. 

3. That there are good reasons for believing that 
Christ's offers of salvation do not terminate at death, 
but extend into the world of departed spirits. 

4. That the doctrine of eternal misery from the direct 
hand of God and apart from the operation of natural 
law, cannot be literally true. 

These were advanced positions, but they did not solve 
the great Problem. 

In the Summer of 1897, I came clearly to see that the 
problem of man's destiny was closely interlinked with 
every one of the great doctrines of the Christian faith, 
and must be studied in connection with them ; each 
throwing such light upon the future life as it naturally 
contained. I seemed to see that if these gleams of light, 
from many sources, could be gathered into a common 
centre, they might disclose the right solution of man's 
destiny. This accounts for the wide range of study 



10 



EXPLANATORY. 



pursued in the following chapters. I saw, as the title 
of my book suggests, the necessity of revising, and at 
times almost revolutionizing, some venerable theological 
conclusions, chiefly along metaphysical lines. While 
these studies of great subjects must necessarily be short 
and incomplete, they should yet be full enough to cover 
essential points, to justify proposed and implied re- 
visions, and to indicate their bearing on the Problem of 
Final Destiny. Real and difficult issues in Theology 
may not be dodged in the interest of policy, nor may 
they be subjected to .unfair or partisan treatment. Ex- 
haustive discussions in so small a work, on great" sub- 
jects, is not attempted and would be impossible. 

The writing was commenced solely for the clarifica- 
tion of my own mind; and not till the work approached 
completion, and the solution had come clearly into view 
that brought rest to a troubled soul, had I any serious 
thought of subjecting what was written to the attention 
of other minds. I do not like to differ, even in minor 
things, from those with whom I have wrought, in mutual 
confidence, for many years ; but to an honest mind, duty 
stands above all other considerations. 

I wish the work were better done, but I prefer to send 
it forth for what it is, — a record of one mind's earnest 
search for truth that, in the light of theological revision, 
should solve the problem of Final Destiny. 

I cherish the hope that most of the chapters may be 
read by some with interest and profit, for what they are 
in themselves, and apart from the special end that led 
to their composition, with which, perhaps, not every 
reader will find himself in full accord. If we must differ, 
let us differ in mutual love and confidence. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Problem Stated and Opened - - 13 

II. The Personality of God in the Problem - 28 

III. The Tri-Unity of God in the Problem - 40 

IV. The Honor, Justice and Love of God in the 

Problem - - - - - - - 53 

V. The Double Nature of Man in the Problem 69 

VI. Creation by Evolution in the Problem - 85 

VII. The Bible as a Book in the Problem - 98 

VIII. Immortal Life in the Problem - - - 115 

IX. Sin in the Problem 131 

X. Christ and His Gospel in the Problem - 146 

XI. The Intermediate State in the Problem 160 

XII. The Doctrine of Atonement in the Prob- 

lem -177 

XIII. The Adamic, or Creedal System of Meta- 

physics in the Problem - - - 190 

XIV. The Creedal View Modified in the Problem 205 
XV. Eternal Hope, How Maintained in the 

Problem 219 

XVI. Christ's Words on Future Punishment in 

the Problem - 234 

XVII. Christ's Second Coming, the Resurrection 

and Judgment in the Problem - - 257 
XVIII. The Law of Natural Consequences in 

the Problem 274 

XIX. The Natural and the Supernatural in 

the Problem 291 

XX. Final Conclusion in the Problem - - 306 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PROBLEM STATED AND OPENED. 

For more than six thousand years the generations of 
men, like ocean waves, have been thrown up on the 
shores of time and rolled back into the infinite deep. 
What has been in the past will continue to be in the 
future. History repeats itself. "One generation cometh 
and another goeth. After the fathers shall be the chil- 
dren/' This has been and, to the end will be, the order of 
Divine Providence. 

Whence came these countless millions of human be- 
ings, and whither do they go? This is the problem of 
Final Destiny which has not yet been solved. 

The great question here proposed involves others that 
hang around and enter into it, such as these : Was man's 
entrance into life a new creation, or was he pre-existent? 
"Does death end all," or is there continued life after 
physical death? Is immortality unconditional and uni- 
versal? Has life, after death, any close connection with 
life in this world, and, if so, what? Do all share alike in 
the after world, or are some perfectly happy and others 
utterly miserable? Will existence, to any part of man- 



14 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTIXY. 



kind, be a curse and not a blessing? What has the 
principle of natural consequences to do in deciding man's 
condition in the great hereafter? Did Christ come into 
the world to save a part of mankind or the whole? 
and will the purpose of his coming be accomplished? 
May not final restitution, obtain to the extent that ex- 
istence, to all who bear God's image and are made im- 
mortal, shall be a source of greater good than evil? 

These, and other similar questions, enter into and 
constitute the great problem of Destiny. At bottom 
they are all one question : — Whence and Whither? 

This is for the human race the question of questions. 
Nothing else, from a practical point of view compares 
with it. It touches the vital issues of man's existence 
here and hereafter. It concerns every human being, 
and is so great a problem that it involves, more or less, 
almost every other of enduring interest. What is life 
to us if we know not the end toward which we are tend- 
ing? Croesus, king of the Lydians, rolling in wealth 
and luxury, asked of his philosophic counsellor — expect- 
ing a flattering answer — if he did not consider him the 
happiest of mortals? His faithful friend replied: "It is 
not possible to decide that one's life is truly prosperous 
and happy until we know how it terminates." This is 
pre-eminently true of man's existence. All that wealth, 
honor, pleasure and prosperity of every kind which this 
world can bestow does not satisfy a thoughtful mind., 
destined to an immortal conscious existence, apart from 
some reasonable assurance as to whether this endless 
existence is to be one of infinite good or of infinite evil to 
its possessor. So long as such a question hangs in 
doubt, the soul of man, be he peasant, philosopher, mil- 
lionaire or king, must be restless ; death must ever re- 



THE PROBLEM STATED AND OPENED. 



IS 



main the king of terrors ; men must feel that it is better 
to "bear the ills they have than fly to others that they 
know not of." At best, "riches take to themselves wings 
and fly away." Life is a fleeting shadow, a hand's 
breadth, a tale that is told, "a meteor in the sky, which, 
before we've said, see, see! 'tis fled." But there is an 
eternity beyond. What to us and to the human race is 
that eternity to be? 

There may be people who regard such a question as 
unworthy of their attention ; but such ones are themselves 
unworthy of the intellectual and moral natures that God 
has given them. Most men have times of profound 
thought on this great subject ; and history shows that it 
has ever been so. Apart from the problem of Destiny, we 
know not how to explain anything. Existence is an 
awful mystery ; the course or history of human life is in- 
explicable; God Himself is the "Great Unknowable," 
in whose presence we bow down, but whether we should 
do it in fear and dread, or in confidence and love, who, 
apart from light on the awful problem of Destiny, can 
satisfactorily decide? 

This great problem, on which the world has been think- 
ing for thousands of years, is still unsettled. The ques- 
tions at the opening of this chapter indicate the variety 
and diversity of opinions that still prevail. A deep feel- 
ing of uncertainty, an undercurrent of misgiving and 
doubt, of mingled hope and fear are continually, and 
from every quarter, revealed. Those who think they 
have solved the problem would give worlds, if they had 
them, to know assuredly that they had solved it correctly 
and beyond the possibility of mistake. 

Is the problem of Human Destiny solvable? The fact 
that it has not yet been fully solved is not proof that it 



1 6 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

cannot be. Other questions that perplexed the thinking 
world for ages have, at length, reached satisfactory solu- 
tions. The Copernican system of Astronomy is an ex- 
ample. How men of scientific turn and culture struggled 
with the problem of our Solar System and of the stellar 
heavens ! But, at last, by a wide range of study, and the 
grouping together of rays of light from all quarters the 
great system of astronomic truth stood revealed, and a 
new universe was created. So, the time must come, if 
men study honestly, patiently and in right directions and 
long enough, when this problem of Destiny will yield up 
its secrets to the infinite satisfaction of a weary and wait- 
ing world. 

Demonstrable solution of the problem at the present 
time is probably impossible. No one has yet come back 
from the unseen world fully to reveal its secrets. I do 
not mean to deny that messengers from the spirit world 
have appeared to men in such a way as to prove the fact 
of continued life after death ; nor would I venture to pre- 
dict that the time will never come when communications 
between the seen and the unseen worlds will be far more 
frequent, marked and satisfactory than they have ever 
yet been. But, certainly, at present, no such reliable 
testimony is generally believed to exist. Swedenborg 
claimed to have communications with spirits in the world 
of spirits ; but I do not see how any one can read many of 
his strange and weird narratives without concluding that 
he often mistook hallucination for reality. 

Conceding that the problem of Final Destiny cannot at 
present be solved on the basis of demonstrative certainty, 
may it not be placed on the pedestal of rational probabil- 
ity? Probability, rather than certainty, is the ground on 
which we all stand in relation to nine-tenths of the ques- 



THE PROBLEM STATED AND OPENED. 



tions with which we have to deal. Outside of mathe- 
matical and moral axioms our beliefs, decisions and 
actions have to be regulated largely by degrees of proba- 
bility. When probability is very strong, men should act 
upon it and follow its guidance with caution, but without 
hesitation. Wise men do this; weak men hesitate; and 
this constitutes largely the difference between success 
and failure in this world, and may, as regards the world 
beyond. Final Destiny, on the basis of rational proba- 
bility^ then all that these chapters are expected to estab- 
lish ; but that probability will, I trust, appear so great that 
rational people should not hesitate to accept and act upon 
it with confidence and earnest endeavor, as they do on 
other questions to which they are similarly related. 

A rational solution of the problem of Final Destiny 
necessitates a re-examination and careful revision of the 
historic Creeds, and some of the traditional beliefs of the 
Christian Church. As the Creeds stand to-day, the prob- 
lem is already solved. They lay down the exact condi- 
tions on which alone the salvation of any soul is possible. 
Then they make it clear, in view of these conditions and 
existing facts, that the great proportion of the human 
family, past and present, who have attained the state of 
moral accountability, not having complied with these 
specified conditions, are, and must be eternally lost; in 
other words, tormented forever by the direct hand of 
God. For nearly 2,000 years this has been the doctrine 
of the Creeds and the professed belief of the Christian 
Church. All this time the heart of man, apart from 
creedal dogma, has more or less revolted against so awful 
a conclusion, which it cannot reconcile with the love and 
justice of God. 

Creedal theology, unrevised, makes no compromises ; 



l8 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

and therefore the feeling is everywhere growing that the 
time is near, if it has not arrived, when, on this and on 
many other points, a revision and re-statement is a neces- 
sity. 

In view of these facts, the title of this work has been 
adopted, which is, The Problem of Final Destiny, Studied 
in the Light of Revised Theological Statement. Apart from 
such a revision there can be no other than the old un- 
satisfactory solution. The revised statement, which must 
retain all fundamental and essential truth, is expected of 
itself to reveal a new solution. But, to many minds the 
very idea of such a revisal suggests a rejection of the 
l^ible, the putting of dishonor upon Jesus Christ, and a 
meandering into bypaths of heresy; just as if the world 
had never made progress and was never expected to. 
While revision and restatement upon every other subject 
is, from time to time a necessity, why should credal The- 
ology, which at best is of human origin, be a conspicuous 
exception? 

A glance at the world's theological history, and at the 
many and great changes through which it has passed, 
should convince any one that still further change, care- 
fully considered and cautiously introduced, is to be ex- 
pected as both certain and necessary. The history of 
creed revisals is both interesting and instructive. Let 
us glance at some of them. 

The early parts of the Old Testament are a revision 
and re-statement of traditions and beliefs that had been 
current among tribes and nations much older than Moses 
or Abraham. Many suppose that all contained in these 
earlier writings was a new and independent revelation 
direct from God ; and not, in large part, a revised state- 
ment of traditions and beliefs that ante-date Hebrew 



THE PROBLEM STATED AND OPENED. 



history. But late discoveries of those older records dis- 
prove this. Then, the later portions of the Old Testa- 
ment revise, in part, the earlier ones. The Bible is 
throughout a progressive Book. 

The New Testament is, to a great extent, a revisal and 
restatement of the Old. Jesus revised the Jewish con- 
ception of Himself and of His Kingdom. He revised the 
Ten Commandments, taking them out of the negative 
and putting them into a positive form. He revised and 
modified the Fourth Commandment, retaining its spirit, 
but rejecting its letter. He enlarged the meaning of the 
Fifth Commandment, making murder to consist not 
alone in killing, but equally in hating one's brother. 
The Seventh Commandment was greatly expanded, so as 
to include thoughts equally with deeds. Christ reversed 
the Jewish conception of God, making Him a Father and 
a God of love, and not a Being possessed of like passions 
with ourselves, as He had been conceived of by many of 
the old Hebrews. He put a new estimate upon man no 
less than upon God ; He brought life and immortality to 
light as the Old Testament did not. He made all men 
brethren and children of a common Father. Jesus re- 
versed the conception of the whole moral law, and made 
it to consist alone, as God's character consisted, in love. 
Love was the fulfilling of the law. On this one Command- 
ment hung all the law and the prophets. Thus, the New 
Testament, while it embodies all that was good in the 
Old, throws out a vast amount of what was human and 
temporal, and was intended to pass away, or, to re-appear 
in greatly modified and improved form. In these and 
other ways the New Testament is a full revision of the 
Old. Man and revelation advance together. 

Then, again, the apostolic age witnessed, to some ex- 



20 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



tent, though perhaps unconsciously, a revisal and re-state- 
ment of Gospel teaching. Christ laid down great prin- 
ciples ; the Apostles sought to reduce those principles to 
a system of doctrines ; They did more ; after the resurrec- 
tion we hear almost nothing of the Kingdom of God 
which was the great theme of our Lord's teaching. Now, 
the Church, which Christ mentioned but twice, takes the 
place of the Kingdom, which He spoke of about eighty 
times. No one can compare the epistles of Paul with the 
Gospels, without seeing how great is the difference of 
expression between them. This apostolic revision was 
not a denial of anything contained in the Gospels, but 
was an advance along partly new lines. 

After the apostolic age, and when Christianity was be- 
coming a power in the Roman Empire, ambition for 
party leadership entered into the Church ; party zeal ran 
high, differences prevailed and a re-statement of Chris- 
tian doctrine was demanded. This resulted in the calling 
of the Nicene Council, and others of less note, for the 
dogmatic settlement of Christian doctrine. That great 
revision and re-statement, after a hundred years of con- 
tention was accepted, and through ten centuries of 
spiritual death in the Church was practically unques- 
tioned. 

Then, at the opening of the 16th century, the Refor- 
mation was inaugurated, which divided the Roman 
Catholic Church and established Protestantism over half 
of Europe. After this, among Protestants, the work of 
revision and creed-manufacture was renewed ; and it 
finally crystallized, among English speaking people, in 
the Westminster Confession of Faith. For a time gen- 
eral satisfaction prevailed. A little later it came to be 
seen that the metaphysics of the creed denied man's free- 



THE PROBLEM STATED AND OPENED. 



21 



dom, as the older system had done, and so left him in a 
state of inability and irresponsibility. Of course, the 
power of the Gospel was broken, and irreligion came 
like a flood over England and America. To correct this 
state of things, another creedal revision was necessary ; 
and President Edwards, Dr. Hopkins, Andrew Fuller, 
and others became theological reformers. They revised 
the creedal doctrine of the Will. That, in the end, divided 
the Churches into what was called New and Old School 
sections, and this distinction with variations has con- 
tinued to this day. 

Then, again, the scientific, historic and literary ad- 
vances and discussions of the last forty years have 
created so much of restlessness, uncertainty and dissatis- 
faction with existing formulas, that still another revision 
and re-statement of doctrine is made necessary. While 
one class in the Church is eagerly engaged in discussions 
preliminary to such revision, another class appears to be 
in a state of alarm lest the Bible and the Christian faith 
should be overthrown. The past history of revision, as 
here outlined, ought to dispel such groundless fears. 
Only the wood, hay and stubble will be discarded or 
burned; while the gold, silver and precious stones will 
have new settings, and shine more brilliantly than ever. 

What has been in the past will continue to be in the 
future. As knowledge increases — knowledge of the 
Bible, of science, of history, of literature and of the sacred- 
ness of man's moral intuitions — revision, in every depart- 
ment of human knowledge, theology included, is to be 
expected and desired. And this same process must go 
on in the world of departed spirits and among the angels 
of God. All that finite beings can ever know must be 



22 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



infinitely less than infinite ; and, as knowledge increases, 
revisions of past thought must follow. 

The lesson from this sketch on the subject of revision 
should quiet the fears of the timid, shut the mouths of 
those who regard Creeds as finalities, and encourage 
earnest seekers after truth to go forward thoughtfully 
and prayerfully in the work to which God calls them. 
Light must be sought from all quarters, accepted and fol- 
lowed, lead where it may. Revision is the order of this 
world, and so long as time endures and knowledge in- 
creases, it should be encouraged and not repressed. God 
only is unchangeable. 

I would emphasize the fact that the present time is 
peculiarly favorable for the study of this and other great 
problems, and for needful revisions. The whole civilized 
world appears to be in a state of unrest and transition. 
Social, civil and religious life are all drifting towards 
some new order of things as yet but dimly seen. "Com- 
ing events cast their shadows before. ,, Naturally, con- 
servatism resists the change, and it is probably best that 
it should, as a too rapid movement might produce dis- 
order. New ideas need to be well examined, and tested 
on all sides, before they come into general acceptance. 
Recklessness always leads to ruin. 

Thinking people are now alive to the great questions 
of the day; and, especially, to the central truths of re- 
ligion. They may not all care to express themselves 
fully. While men have not the interest in Creeds they 
once had, yet the living truths that hang around those 
Creeds, but may be no longer symbolized in them, were 
never so vivid in the thoughts, not only of church peo- 
ple, but of the world generally, as they are to-day. Those 
who look on this as an inconsiderate and really sceptical 



THE PROBLEM STATED AND OPENED. 



23 



age are profoundly mistaken. It is true that new ideas 
on some points are supplanting old ones ; but men want 
to know the truth and to find God, as they never did 
before ; and they are seeking for Him, not in books and 
sermons alone, as they once did, but in themselves. The 
truths of Christ's Gospel are largely supported now, not 
so much by arguments addressed to the intellect, as by 
appeals to the consciences and consciousness of men. 
God in us and we in God, is now, more than ever before, 
the foundation of Christian hope. The immanence of 
God, the love of God, the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man, — these are the great vital principles 
and facts in the type of religion that is beginning to 
move, and will soon move the world as it has not been 
moved before. What was once theory, form and law, is 
now coming to be spirit and life. "The letter killeth, but 
the spirit giveth life." 

In this new movement that is agitating the world, the 
great problem of Human Destiny comes to the front and 
has to be considered, both from old and from new points 
of view. Modified conceptions of God, of truth and of 
man, and what they all signify, and how they stand re- 
lated, are changing man's conceptions of probable 
Destiny. Endless punishment is no longer accepted and 
proclaimed as it once was ; and a general hope, growing 
into belief, prevails that the doctrine, in its old, legal, 
mechanical, sensuous form of statement is not true. In 
the creedal form, it is not believed by the people ; and the 
present attitude of a large number of Christian ministers 
of all orders is one of uncertainty and doubt. The people 
know and feel this ; they know it from the changed style 
of preaching and speaking on the subject, all of which 
tends to unsettle the faith of the Church and the world, 



24 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



not only on this, but, to an extent, on other religious 
questions. It must then, by all leaders of Christian 
thought, be fairly and fearlessly met and settled in a way 
that shall honor God and satisfy man's reason and intui- 
tive sense of right and justice. 

The securing of such a result must involve a wide 
range of investigation. The problem of Human Destiny 
is so interblended with all the great questions of Chris- 
tian Theology that it cannot be studied separately, by 
itself. Each cardinal doctrine must be briefly but care- 
fully considered, and made to yield up its quota of evi- 
dence that bears upon, and helps to solve, the problem. 
No one line of evidence could solve it ; but when all these 
gleams of light, from many sources, are converged to a 
common centre, then the looked-for solution may be 
expected of itself to appear. The proposed extended 
course of study may be briefly outlined as follows : 

The Personality of God is the fundamental fact always 
to be recognized ; for, if there be no personal God, there 
is no problem. Then theTri-Unity of God must be consid- 
ered. Not the personality of God alone, but His moral 
character as a God of honor, justice, mercy and love 
must be clearly apprehended ; for, upon these qualities 
in God, man's destiny depends. Then man himself must 
be studied; his two-fold nature, animal and spiritual; 
the conflict between them, and the probable issue of the 
struggle should come into view. Creation, its nature, 
its law, its progress, its purpose and interpretation, at 
least so far as man is concerned, must throw light on 
the problem to be solved. The Bible, as a Book, con- 
taining human and Divine elements, and its place and 
value in the discussion has to be carefully considered. 
The question of Immortal Life, and what it suggests as 



THE PROBLEM STATED AND OPENED. 25 

to God's purpose in creation, should come into the study. 
The doctrine of Sin, viewed in its relationships, and 
especially as to its nature, desert and penalty, must have 
an important bearing on the great problem. Christ and 
His Gospel — the central ground of hope — must be 
studied as Christ revealed it. The controverted doctrine 
of Atonement calls for examination and revision. The 
question of the Intermediate State, or of life between 
death and finality, and as to what may take place in a 
soul's experience during this period calls for careful con- 
sideration. Creeds, and, especially, the "Adamic System 
of Metaphysics," have had a large share in forming con- 
clusions as to Human Destiny, and so, must be reviewed 
and revised. Christ's words on Future Punishment are 
of great import and must have careful study. The ques- 
tion of Eternal Hope, the value of hope, what crushes 
it, and the efforts men make to encourage hope as to the 
life after death, must be considered. The Second Coming 
of Christ, the Resurrection and Judgment, all closely re- 
lated, bear directly on the great problem. The hypothesis 
of natural consequences, as illustrated in Divine and 
human Governments, is one of the most important studies 
in the whole series. Then, as a branch of the same, the 
place of the Natural and Supernatural in the world's 
history has to be considered. And, finally, the rays of 
light from all the preceding studies must be collected 
and converged to a common centre, out of which the 
solution of the problem of Human Destiny ought natu- 
rally to arise and stand forth, at least on a basis of strong 
rational probability. 

These are great themes; and, while they are to be 
studied with constant reference to their eschatological 
bearing, yet the themes in themselves, though briefly and 



26 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



imperfectly unfolded, are of such great interest that their 
discussion should claim attention apart from the special 
end to be kept ever in view. 

In this whole course of study, as in most others, as 
much depends upon the method of investigation as 
upon the investigation itself. If the postulate or deduc- 
tive method is adopted, then we have not a series of 
subjects to be studied, but a proposition to be proved, 
which necessitates, or, at least, secures an ex-parte argu- 
ment in its support. To assume the main conclusion 
in advance is almost to affirm that further investigation 
is unnecessary; at least, it involves such committal to a 
theory as to make an impartial study of the whole sub- 
ject impossible. Unfortunately most theological con- 
troversies have been conducted on the postulate plan, 
and this is why they are generally unsatisfactory and in- 
conclusive; and why, also, the method should be aban- 
doned. 

What is known as the Inductive or study method, as 
Lord Bacon presented it, is far preferable. This begins 
with no theory or proposition to sustain ; it is only look- 
ing after facts and their bearing on the question to be 
investigated. The facts must speak for themselves, so 
that no conclusion is forced into view; that must come 
of itself, and it will be recognized when it appears. On 
this inductive plan one must not reach conclusions from 
a narrow line of study, but must range for his facts over 
w T ide fields that encircle the whole question. Then, those 
facts themselves must be studied, classified, compared 
and allowed to give their own testimony until, step by 
step, the conclusion becomes more and more distinct 
and finally stands out a self-revealed truth. 

Of late, what may be called the Intuitive or Psycho- 



THE PROBLEM STATED AND OPENED. 



2/ 



logical method of study, in the department of The- 
ology, is holding a larger place than formerly. Men 
are beginning to find God and moral truth in themselves 
more, and out of themselves less, than they once did. 
God has put into the reason and conscience of moral 
beings certain fundamental principles and distinctions of 
Right and Wrong, of Honor and Justice that are com- 
mon to all men, and from whose decisions there is no 
appeal. These felt and conceded principles of moral 
intuition are the arbiters of truth and duty wherever they 
apply. They help to settle many questions that other- 
wise would hang in endless doubt. In the future, most 
questions of religious duty must be settled more at the 
bar of reason and conscience than by appeal to authority. 

In accordance with ideas that have now been sug- 
gested, the effort to solve the great problem of Destiny, 
not demonstratively, but on the ground of rational proba- 
bility, is undertaken. Some views will be expressed and 
conclusions reached that current theology, as we find 
it in the Creeds and in popular belief, cannot accept. 
But, if freedom of thought, and frank statement of con- 
clusions that seem to follow, are to be sacrificed for any 
reason whatever, then it were better that the work should 
not have been undertaken. Truth alone is worth the 
seeking; and if, on so great a subject, one can go so far 
as to establish a basis of strong probability, one's labor, 
though not a finality, is not in vain. In any event, truth 
once apprehended is in no danger of being overthrown. 
In the words of John Milton : 

"Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to 
play upon the earth, so truth is in the field we do in- 
juriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her 
strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew 
truth put to the worse in a fair and free encounter ?" 



23 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PERSONALITY OF GOD IN THE PROBLEM. 

If there be any rational ground for hope that the great 
proportion of the human family will enter into everlast- 
ing life, and that, to none will existence prove an infinite 
curse, that hope centres in God. God, then, is the chief 
fact and factor in the problem of Final Destiny. Other 
factors, as we shall see, enter into it; but, apart from 
this central one, they could never solve the question. The 
Supreme Being then must be carefully studied in three 
aspects — Personality, Tri-Unity, Moral Character — 
showing incidentally how each is related to Man's Des- 
tiny. This study must occupy the present and the two 
following chapters. 

If there be no personal God, there is no problem to 
solve, for the universe is in the grasp of cruel, heartless 
fate. An impersonal God is impossible of conception. 
Divine Personality (apart from Scripture) may be es- 
tablished on three grounds — moral intuition, human con- 
sciousness and logical induction. The first two of these, 
because more familiar, will be considered briefly. 

i. Moral intuitions prove the personality of God. By 
intuition I mean those beliefs and judgments that pre- 
sent themselves spontaneously to the mind with irresist- 
ible evidence, and without the assistance of reasoning or 
reflection. They are self-evident and necessary truths. 
In every course of study something has to be assumed 
as conceded truth. 



THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 



2 9 



The study of Astronomy assumes the truth of num- 
bers, of mathematical axioms and the fact of angles, 
space and duration. The study of Physics assumes the 
existence of matter and the reality of touch, sight and 
sound. The study of Psychology assumes the existence 
of mind and the fact of consciousness. So, the study of 
Religion, and of the problem of Final Destiny assumes 
the existence and personality of God. It assumes this 
on the ground of moral intuition. All people in all ages 
have believed in the existence of a personal God, not 
because they have reasoned themselves into that belief, 
so much as because man is so constituted that the belief 
in a Supreme Being is a moral necessity. It is as natural 
for man to believe in the existence of a personal God as it 
is to believe in one's own personal existence ; and, prob- 
ably as many people doubt the reality of one as of the 
other. 

Upon this point of intuitive authority all theological 
and most philosophical writers agree. Sir William Ham- 
ilton says : "We are inspired with a belief in something 
unconditioned beyond the sphere of comprehensible 
reality." Mr. Mansel, in his ''Limitations of Religious 
Thought," expresses the same idea more simply : "We 
are compelled by the constitution of our minds to be- 
lieve in the existence of an Absolute and Infinite Being/' 
Such, in a word, is the intuitive method of finding God. 
Expansion here is unnecessary. 

The second method of reaching the same conclusion 
is the argument from Consciousness, including necessary 
inferences. Consciousness as commonly defined is that 
power, or mental state, that makes us aware of ourselves, 
of our mental conditions, thoughts, feelings and actions. 
But Consciousness is more than this. It embraces the 



30 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



physical world that surrounds us ; the books that help to 
make and mould our thoughts ; the people who influence 
us for good or evil ; and so it may include God in whom 
we live, move and have our being. Within its sphere, 
consciousness is the highest of all authority. It is, as 
Herbert Spencer has said, "man's final appeal, and has 
the deepest of all foundations. " The argument from con- 
sciousness, including necessary inferences, in proof of a 
personal God, begins with the study of ourselves. The 
mental process, put into the first person, runs somewhat 
as follows : I am conscious of myself, that I exist, that I 
have feeling, that I possess a degree of intelligence, that 
I am a moral being, that I possess endowments that 
constitute personality, that I am finite, and therefore am 
not self-existent, that I must, then, have been created, 
and therefore I have a Creator; and, by inference, that 
the powers with which I am endowed by my Creator, 
He must, in kind, possess, since no one can impart what 
He does not have; that my consciousness of finiteness 
necessitates the idea and fact of infiniteness, and that 
only the Infinite can create, and I must conclude, there- 
fore, that my Creator is an Infinite Being, possessed of 
infinite attributes, whom I know as God. This is God- 
consciousness. 

There are different ways of stating the argument from 
consciousness, but they all begin with ourselves and lead 
consciously up to God. The great oracle of the Greek 
philosophers, which they thought to be so profound that 
it must have descended from the gods, was : "Know thy- 
self and thou shalt know all things." On this, they 
founded their philosophy, which was their religion. Of 
late, Christian philosophers and thinkers are coming back 
to the same method of study; and this method gives a 



THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 



31 



new conception of God, and, to a considerable extent, of 
Christian doctrine and of religion. Not only do we find 
God's personality in the way here described, but in a 
similar way, we arrive at His moral character as a God 
of love, and as the Father of mankind, who loves His 
children and does all for the well-being of each that wis- 
dom, love and power can do. From the moral nature 
and potentialities of man, we reason to the moral charac- 
ter of God. What man was made to be, in a finite 
sense, God must be in an infinite sense. God has 
outlined Himself in every moral being that He has 
created. These seed-thoughts founded in personal con- 
sciousness make havoc with some of the creedal dogmas 
of past centuries ; but the testimony of consciousness, 
and the argument from that testimony will stand, what- 
ever else falls. Man is first of all a religious being, and 
the voice of consciousness as to God, is the foundation 
on which all true religion rests. 

The third method of reaching the conclusion of a Per- 
sonal God, — which will be given more at length, — is the 
inductive argument from First Cause. The fact of caus- 
ality is everywhere recognized; the principle on which 
it rests appears to be the underlying principle of the uni- 
verse. At least, it underlies everything except God Him- 
self. No one has stated this law of causality more clearly, 
or traced it logically back to First Cause, and made more 
of it in his philosophy than has Herbert Spencer, from 
whom I quote as follows : 

"We cannot think at all about the impressions which 
the external world produces on us without thinking of 
them as caused, and we cannot carry out our inquiry 
concerning their causation without inevitably commit- 
ting ourselves to the hypothesis of a First Cause." Again 



32 



THE PROBLEM OF FIXAL DESTINY. 



he says : "It is impossible to consider the First Cause as 
finite ; and, if it cannot be finite, it must be infinite. 
. . . . It must also be independent ; if it is dependent 
it cannot be the First Couse. Thus the First Cause must 
be in every sense perfect, complete, total ; including with- 
in itself all power and transcending all law. Or, to use 
the established word, it must be absolute." 

On this question of First Cause as a necessity, then, 
there can be no difference of opinion among thinking 
people. When we come to inquire into the nature of 
the First Cause itself, differences arise. Mr. Spencer de- 
clares over and over the necessity of a First Cause ; but 
he also claims that, when the human mind has gone that 
far, it can go no further. It knows nothing and can assert 
nothing as to the nature of that First Cause, except that 
it is First and is the "Great Unknowable Force.'' Others, 
taking the same general view, declare the First Cause 
to be Energy ; and still others speak of it as, "Some 
Power in the universe that makes for righteousness/' 
Such varied answers and explanations would seem to in- 
dicate that something must be known of the First Cause 
beyond the mere fact that it is first. 

We recognize in these terms, as Sabatier suggests, 
"not only the First Cause of the Philosophers, but also, 
the image, half effaced, of the God of believers, the God 
of love.'' 

We come, then, to the question : What may we know, 
with reasonable certainty, concerning the First Cause, 
beyond the single fact that it is absolute? We may and 
do know many things, such as the following : 

We know that nothing can come out of the First Cause, 
or proceed from it. which it does not itself contain, for, 
ex nihilo nihil fit. We know that the First Cause acts 



THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 



33 



from itself and not from anything back, or independent 
of, itself; for, then, it would not be a First Cause. We 
know that the First Cause is self-existent or uncreated, 
because it exists and there is nothing back of it; in the 
nature of things, there can be nothing if it is first. We 
know that the First Cause is infinite, for what is un- 
caused cannot be finite and is therefore infinite. The 
First Cause must possess Unity ; it must be one and not 
more, because two or more First Causes are contradic- 
tory and impossible. We know that the First Cause has, 
in some sense, creative power, because the finite exists 
and must have come from the Infinite, and, in that sense, 
is created. The First Cause has plan and purpose, be- 
cause these are clearly revealed in finite, and, therefore, 
causal operations. The First Cause has will-power, be- 
cause it executes, and because it imparts will-power to 
finite beings. Plan, purpose and will-power necessarily 
imply thought; thought as necessarily implies intelli- 
gence. The First Cause has in it also something of moral 
character, because it is a "Power in the universe that 
makes for righteousness," as is conceded, and as every 
observing person sees and knows. The First Cause pos- 
sesses immanence, because it is everywhere operative, 
and no cause can operate where it is not. We know that 
the First Cause has all these qualities or characteristics, 
because we find them existing in finite operations, and 
we have seen that nothing can proceed from a Cause 
which it does not itself contain or possess. Such charac- 
teristics as these combined in a First Cause, imply and 
necessitate consciousness and conscious being, physical, 
mental and moral ; and this, of itself, is what is meant by 
the term Personality. And, further, if the First Cause 
has Personality in any degree, it has infinite Personality, 



34 



THE PROBLEM OF FIXAL DESTIXY. 



and this because itself is infinite, and therefore nothing 
appertaining to it can be finite. Thus the argument from 
First Cause leads to the conclusion of a Personal God, as 
an intelligent and moral Being. 

Here, I anticipate two chief objections. The first is 
that it is just as natural and easy to believe that the 
physical universe is eternal, and that its movements are 
self-originated by a force inherent in itself, as it is to be- 
lieve in a self-existent eternal Being who creates, controls 
and makes it what it is. In the first place, this objection 
assumes that the causative hypothesis means what it does 
not mean, namely, — that the physical universe was actually 
created out of nothing, a thing that is impossible even of 
conception. The causative hypothesis repudiates such a 
conclusion, and holds that the physical universe. — 
because numbers cannot reach infinity, and for other 
reasons, — is finite, and, therefore, not self-existent; that it 
is an emanation from an Infinite Cause, and that this 
Cause is the Infinite God ; that is to say, God creates the 
physical universe from Himself; something of His own 
Being is in it. 

It is objected that this view is Pantheism. — Not so; 
Pantheism makes God and the physical universe inter- 
changeable terms ; whereas this view puts something of 
God into the universe. God is over it, back of it, through 
it; in Him all things exist and consist, and from Him all 
things proceed. But God is infinite, and the physical 
universe is finite, and so is infinitely less than God. An 
apple proceeds from the tree, but it is not the tree. The 
universe sustains some such relation to God, as time does 
to eternity, as location does to space. In a word, God is 
infinite and all else is finite ; therefore the objection that 
the causative hypothesis is pantheistic falls to the ground. 



THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 



35 



On the other hand, there is not a shadow of doubt that 
the main objection now under consideration involves, and 
is meant to involve, the quintessence of the pantheistic 
theory. Its position is that there is nothing back of 
nature, and that nature, by some inherent potentiality, 
or necessary law, organized itself. Such a thing is abso- 
lutely unthinkable, and I will ask Herbert Spencer to 
dispose of it, as follows : 

"The hypothesis of self-creation, which practically 
amounts to what is called Pantheism, is similarly in- 
capable of being expressed in thought. To conceive 
self-creation is to conceive potential existence passing 
into actual existence by some inherent necessity; which 
we cannot do." Thus, the first objection is disposed of, 
but calls for another word. 

The pantheistic theory of self-creation was partly 
adopted by some of the Greek philosophers. In its mod- 
ern form it is largely of Germanic origin. Fifty years 
ago it was hailed by those who wished to escape from 
the idea of a personal God, and especially from some of 
the dogmas of creedal theology, with great expectations. 
The time for man's deliverance from the superstitions 
of religion, they said, had arrived. For years the boast 
was flaunted boldly, and some timid Christians trembled 
for the "Ark of God." But the boast was only of short 
duration. Under the torchlight of scientific investiga- 
tion, more than of theological denouncement, the theory 
was undermined and blown into fragments ; and it is only 
fair to say that the men who did not accept the Christian 
idea of religion did more than any others for the over- 
throw 7 of the pantheistic speculation. They exposed the 
absurdity of self-creation and insisted upon the great 
fact of a First Cause. I do not know of a prominent 



36 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



person who is now willing to stand up and defend, pure 
and simple, the pantheistic theory of self-creation. 

The second objection to the argument for Divine Per- 
sonality, from the hypothesis of First Cause, already 
practically answered, is, that it is essentially the old argu- 
ment from design, and is, therefore, inconclusive. The 
argument from design is both ancient and modern. 
Aristotle and the Greeks put it in syllogistic form and 
thought the argument conclusive, and, at that day it was 
so. Paley, about one hundred years ago, enlarged the 
same argument and adapted it to the needs of Christen- 
dom ; and, for a time, his conclusion was believed to have 
the authority of demonstration. But later on, the ma- 
terialistic argument sprung up and pronounced the syl- 
logistic conclusion a failure, on the ground that the De- 
signer might be either a person, as Paley thought, or 
might be nature itself, which was judged to be quite as 
probable. This alternative conclusion, if admitted, ruins 
the Paley argument as a demonstration. 

While I would not by any means abandon the argu- 
ment from effect to cause, from final to first cause as 
worthless, still its fault should be conceded ; and that 
fault is in the first link of the logical chain. Is that first 
link, and so the whole chain, held by physical nature, or, 
is it in the grasp of an Infinite and Absolute Being whom 
we call God. I do not see that the argument, as Paley 
put and left it, clearly answers that question ; and for the 
reason that Paley begins at the wrong end of the chain. 
He finishes his argument where he should have com- 
menced it, and commences where he should have fin- 
ished. He argued from the less to the greater, from effect 
to cause, from final cause to First Cause; whereas, I 
think, and have tried to show, that the reverse of this 



THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 



37 



order, in view of the objection raised, should have been 
adopted. The old argument was all right until material- 
ism demanded a possible alternative First Cause, — Na- 
ture or God. 

To meet this objection it is necessary to begin with the 
assertion of a First Cause as a necessity, one that every 
rational mind must recognize and concede. This fact 
admitted, the next step should be to discover, as far as 
possible, those qualities or attributes which the First 
Cause must necessarily possess ; and these are the quali- 
ties that were brought into view in the preceding direct 
argument for the personality of God from First Cause. 
Let all those attributes be logically and necessarily as- 
cribed to the First Cause, and at once it is seen that 
such attributes cannot belong to limited impersonal na- 
ture ; they can only adhere in a living, intelligent, moral 
Being. Let this fact be once established and the alterna- 
tive of either of the two first causes is destroyed. 

Had the Paley argument commenced with a careful 
study of the First Cause instead of commencing with the 
study of final cause, and had it discovered in that First 
Cause necessary elements that place it wholly apart from 
physical nature, and this in such a sense as to make physi- 
cal nature not independent in itself, but an emanation, 
from God, then the argument would have been impreg- 
nable. We have but to introduce this change in the form 
of the old argument and it becomes unanswerable if not 
demonstrative. # 

The objections, then, that have seemed to cluster 
around the syllogistic argument and make it incon- 
clusive are avoided in the argument from first cause. 
Indeed, the weak points in the old way of putting the 



38 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



argument for the personality of God, are the strong 
points of the newer method. 

Having found God as existing in First Cause, we are 
now prepared to take up the Paley argument from final 
cause, and to study the ways and works of God as we 
find them in ourselves and in nature around us. In this 
study we 'look through nature up to nature's God ;" and 
the vision, from such a point of view is inspiring and 
glorious. Beholding it we are lost in "wonder, love and 
praise," and find ourselves changed from glory to glory 
as by the Spirit of the Lord. 

Turning back for a moment to our starting point and 
reviewing the ground we have gone over, what have we 
discovered? We have seen that moral intuition, which 
never errs, apprehends and declares the personality of 
God; also that man's consciousness, the most reliable 
of testimony, attests and confirms the same conclusion; 
and, further, that the logical argument or argument from 
First Cause, given at some length, and corroborated by 
that from final cause establishes, if it does not demon- 
strate, Divine Personality. Now, let all these argu- 
ments, — each complete in itself, — as so many strong 
cords be wrought together into one, and we have a cable 
that cannot be broken. In addition to all, and above all, 
let God's voice, at the opening of Scripture, — and which 
is echoed and re-echoed through both Testaments, — be 
heard proclaiming, "In the beginning God created the 
heavens and the earth." This added voice completes the 
study and binds the arch. 

But, it may be asked, of what avail is this search after 
the personality of God? Who doubts it? Of all ques- 
tions, this is the most fundamental in the universe ; and 
it is exactly the point around which modern scepticism 



THE PERSONALITY OF GOD. 



39 



centres and raises objection or doubt. It is the strong- 
hold that must be captured, whatever else fails. Grant 
that most people do believe in a personal God, the other 
fact remains that the great proportion of them could give 
no better reason for that belief than that they had been 
so taught from childhood. It is a mystical, second-hand, 
if not a traditional belief. This greatest fact in the uni- 
verse, from which all other facts proceed, ought to be 
held understandingly, as well as traditionally and intui- 
tively. 

Given, a clearly defined personal God, and the whole 
universe is at once illuminated, and most of its deep mys- 
teries, including that of Final Destiny, are practically 
solved. If we are not the products of nature or of chance,, 
if God is, and is our Creator and Father, if He has 
formed us from Himself and into His own image, and 
made us immortal, it was all for some great end ; and 
that end must have been our eternal well-being. God's 
purposes will not fail of accomplishment. 

Let the fact of God's personal existence be obscured 
by clouds of doubt, or be held only as a traditional and 
unintelligent belief, and the whole world is wrapt in a 
lurid shade, in the midst of which men wander, they 
know not whither, and wrangle, they know not why. 
Mankind are voyagers over stormy seas. God has placed 
us in this condition for a good purpose. He only can 
quell the storms and bring us safely into the port of eter- 
nal rest. Can we trust Him with a child's confidence in 
a loving Father to care for His own children? God, 
then, is the central factor in the problem of Final Des- 
tiny. If there be no God, there is no problem, — Fate 
rules the universe. 



40 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE TRI-UNITY OF GOD IN THE PROBLEM. 

Through fifteen centuries the doctrine of the Trinity 
has been more the central subject of discussion, of heated 
controversy, of bitter acrimony, of dissension and divi- 
sion, and of cruel and often bloody persecution in the 
Christian Church than any other, or, perhaps, than all 
others combined. It was this chiefly that led to the con- 
vening of the Nicene Council, and that arrayed such 
Christian men as Athanasius and Origin against each 
other, and that instigated revolution and persecution that 
extended through succeeding centuries. It was this doc- 
trine that caused Mahomet to protest that the Christian 
Church worshiped three gods, and so was guilty of 
idolatry ; and that led him to proclaim and defend as the 
central truth of his attempted reform the unity of God. 
It was this that so recently, among Protestant churches, 
led to the Unitarian controversy, that brought conten- 
tion and division into so many churches of Old Eng- 
land and of New England. In a word, the doctrine of 
Divine Trinity has been the root of controversy among 
theologians throughout the Christian centuries. 

To the question, why has it been so? the general answer 
must be that the whole subject is so profound, and 
reaches so into the infinite, as to be in its full details un- 
fathomable to finite minds. This, however, has not been 
generally recognized by advocates of the Trinitarian 
view, who, when pressed to explain, have stood on the 



THE TRI-UNITY OF GOD. 



41 



defensive, and felt bound to take positive positions, and 
often to formulate dogmas that reason could not accept, 
nor Scripture support. The theory that three persons 
are one, and that one can be three, — if the word person 
is used in its natural sense, to include intellect, sensibility 
and will, and so personality, — is a self-contradiction, and 
cannot be otherwise. Yet this has been the position of 
the historic Creeds since the beginning of the fourth 
century. Great and good men have claimed to know 
too much; and by their positive dogmas have confused 
themselves and repelled those who could not accept their 
conclusions. 

What does the above statement signify? It clearly 
signifies that the doctrine of the Trinity has a rock- 
foundation. Good, great, honest and earnest men do not 
contend, as has been described, over questions that are 
void of essential, vital truth. The doctrine of the Trinity 
is worth all the thought, learning and controversy that 
have gathered about it, and vastly more. I confidently 
believe, and shall try to explain, that the Tri-Unity of 
God, rightly understood, is the deepest, most central and 
living of all truths ; and that it is, and is to be, the great 
spiritual power that is to reach and save the world. In- 
telligent belief in the Tri-Unity of God is a necessity of 
the race, and this for two reasons. 

First. Man's conscious and supreme need of God, and 
his historic struggle to find Him proves the necessity of 
finding Him. Some dim apprehension of God is innate 
to the human mind. A religion that implies an object 
of worship is man's necessity. Worship he must; and 
he can only worship the true God to the extent of his 
knowledge of Him. In his ignorance man has often mis- 
taken nature for God; and often he has invented and 



42 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



worshiped imaginary deities as far removed from the 
true God as night is from day. But amidst all these 
bewilderments man's soul has been crying after God, the 
living God; and, in his best moments has searched for 
Him as men search for gold and silver. The language 
of the heart has been "O that I knew where I might find 
Him and come even to His seat." Men who have no 
revelation but the light of nature feel this need, and 
try, by earnest thought and religious service, to find God, 
and in Him eternal life ; and this felt need is not confined 
to the heathen world, it is universal. The most en- 
lightened, with the Bible in their hands, and their names 
enrolled on Church records, are most earnest in their 
search and cry after God, feeling that they must know 
Him better and differently, if they would find spiritual 
rest. Ministers of the Gospel often, could their hearts 
be read, would be found to have a similar experience, 
and to mourn their inability to preach to others the 
Gospel of God's love out of the depths of their own 
hearts. Illustrations like these reveal the necessity that 
men feel for a fuller and more practical knowledge of 
God. All other knowledge is superficial, and of small 
value, apart from this, as every moral being at times 
realizes. 

An apprehension of this universal and conscious 
need of knowing God, brings us to the second 
thought. It is this : The utter impossibility of truly 
knowing God, except as He is revealed to us through 
some conception of His Tri-Unity. The philosophers of 
our day unhesitatingly admit and contend that whatever 
is finite in the universe must have been caused ; and, that 
back of all secondary causes there must be a First Cause ; 
and that this First Cause must be Infinite, Eternal and 



THE TRI-UNITY OF GOD. 



43 



Absolute. But they claim, further, that this First Cause 
is incomprehensible to man ; that all we can know is that 
the First Cause is Force, unknowable and absolute; or, 
at most, that it is "some power in the universe that 
makes for righteousness." I am compelled to concede 
that, apart from what is revealed to me of God through 
His Tri-Unity, I see no way of meeting that cold and 
unsatisfactory hypothesis. God, considered as an In- 
finite, Absolute Being, is incomprehensible to the finite 
mind. We cannot grasp the thought in such a way as 
to make it clear and practical to ourselves. It may stir 
the imagination, but it cannot give us the true God and 
life in Him. It leaves us orphans in the world ; — 
mere links in the causal chain of events, — and with no 
certainty of a conscious existence after physical death. 

As a matter of history, where a clear conception of 
Tri-Unity has not been known, God has not been known, 
except as an incomprehensible abstraction; and, just in 
proportion as men come to know God in His Tri-Unity, 
they feel His spiritual presence and power. Even an 
imperfect and almost self-contradictory apprehension of 
God's Tri-Unity is far better than no apprehension. Just 
in proportion as men realize the Tri-Unity of God, and 
draw their light and life from that source, they find 
spiritual illumination, and are inspired with faith, hope, 
love and life in the work of spreading the "good 
news" for the saving of the world ; and, where this con- 
ception, in every form, is wholly rejected, its rejectors lack 
those earnest qualities that a positive view inspires. Such 
is the testimony of observation, of history, and of per- 
sonal experience. A belief in Tri-Unity is necessary to 
an experimental knowledge of God. 

We have now reached the main question : Is it pos- 



44 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTIXY. 



sible to gain such a conception of the Tri-Unity of God 
as, while in accord with Scripture, it shall satisfy reason, 
and meet the longings and needs of earnest souls in 
their search after God? Plainly, the old creedal view of 
the Trinity is so beset with difficulties as to be unsatis- 
factory to thinking people. It contains much of truth, 
but truth commingled with so much of what seems 
impossible of belief as greatly to neutralize its satisfying 
and saving power. If I did not seem to see a better way 
of presenting the Tri-Unity of God than the old theory 
offers, I should remain silent on the whole subject. What 
is that better way? 

Before coming directly to the question, In what does 
the Tri-Unity of God consist, and how can it be ration- 
ally explained? two things should be premised. 

First, that the exact mode of God's existence is, and 
ever must be, incomprehensible to finite beings. We 
know that God is much as we know that duration is, and 
that space is. We know that God must be Infinite, 
Eternal, Absolute; but the how of God's existence we 
do not comprehend. Those who profess to know, and 
try to explain the mystery, only confuse themselves and 
bewilder those w T hom they try to instruct. Had this 
fact always been recognized and admitted, good and 
learned men would have been saved much useless toil, 
and the Christian Church much harmful controversy. 

The second thing to be premised is that the term Tri- 
Unity cannot mean, in any proper sense of that term, 
tri-personality. The term, three persons, or any equiva- 
lent, as applied to God, is not in the Bible, and is greatly 
misleading. A person is one possessed of intellect, sen- 
sibility, will and consciousness ; and three such beings 
cannot be one, and must be three. The idea of one God 



THE TRI-UNITY OF GOD. 



45 



consisting of three distinct persons is a metaphysical 
dogma which was formulated in the early Christian cen- 
turies unfortunately, as John Calvin and other such men 
admit, and has been transmitted and generally held and 
defended in the Church ever since. But the tri-person- 
ality of God, if it means anything consistent and com- 
prehensible, means tri-Theism, which, again, means, must 
mean three gods. And this is the fatal difficulty that re- 
pelled Mahomet, and has repelled thousands of better 
men since his day. 

And yet the three-fold distinction has a legitimate 
meaning, and contains the central truth of the whole 
Christian system. Almost the last words that Jesus spoke 
on leaving the world represented God under a new name ; 
and gave to that name a new and enlarged signification. 
He called God by the name of Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost; and, further, He commanded that His disciples 
should henceforth be baptized into this Xew Name; and 
that command, so full of vital meaning, has been care- 
fully observed by His followers ever since. 

The distinction indicated in Jesus' new name for God 
is real and not fictitious ; and must be susceptible of some 
rational explanation. The deep meaning of Jesus' bap- 
tismal formula, which gives to God the new name must 
be sought for in the formula itself; and a true exposi- 
tion of that formula will bring it into view. The three 
heads, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and what each 
means, and the relations they sustain to each other, have 
to be considered. 

i. What did Christ here mean by the term Father. 
This appellation, as Jesus understood it, was virtually a 
new name for God, who, in the Old Testament, was 
commonly called by such terms as Jehovah, the Al- 



4 6 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



mighty, Creator, King, Judge and other such titles. 
True, the name Father was not quite foreign to some of 
the evangelical prophets. Isaiah exclaims, "Doubtless, 
God is our Father/' as if the conception were new, and of 
questionable meaning. Some of the Psalms, in a poeti- 
cal sense, use the same title. But the name Father, 
with full understanding of its import, and as a common 
name for God is of New Testament origin. The old 
names for God, grand as they were, contain no such 
tender meaning as the word Father conveys. Jesus con- 
stantly calls God His Father, and He taught us all to 
say in our daily prayers, Our Father. It is the name 
that runs all through the Gospels and Epistles; and it 
brought into the world a new conception of God which 
endears Him to His children, so that now we always 
think and speak of God as our Father ; and this, without 
considering that, when Jesus spoke the word, He gave* 
to men, not another God, but a new meaning to that 
sacred name, and one that goes to the hearts of men and 
makes them rejoice that they are all His children, and 
that God is their patient, faithful, loving Father, who 
seeks, in His w T isdom and love, only their highest and 
eternal good. This baptismal name — Father — is the 
new name that makes us sons and daughters of the Lord 
Almighty. Even now the full import of that precious 
name is not known to men as Jesus knew it, and sought 
to convey its meaning to the world. 

(2) What, secondly, does the word Son signify in this 
new baptismal name for God, of which it is an essential 
part? 

The name of the Son was declared to be above every 
name; He was filled with all the fullness of God; and 
He was God manifest in the flesh. He and His Father 



THE TRI-UXITY OF GOD. 



47 



are one ; He was sent of the Father to become the 
Saviour of the world. How is all this to be explained? 
In answer to that question, we may derive some light 
from archives of nature. All life, being an emanation 
from God, and having something of God in it, unifies 
life, so that each life is in some sense a part of the com- 
mon and universal life. Especially is this true of moral 
beings, who, in their moral natures are closely allied to 
God, and bear His image. God is their Father, and "He 
is over all, in all, and through all." The immanence of 
God, in the full import of that term, as it is now used, 
and especially His immanence in the hearts and lives of 
good men, makes them pre-eminently His children and 
He their Father. 

How does the Sonship of Christ differ from the son- 
ship of other good men who are also the sons of God? 
The difference is incomparably great; and yet, so far as 
I can see, it is a difference in degree rather than in kind. 
Jesus was a man among men. He ever spoke of Himself 
as the son of man; and His complete humanity is not 
questioned. He was not only man, but He was the repre- 
sentative man. He represented the whole human race, 
not as other men do, but in a high, divine sense, as the 
Saviour of men. No man ever will or can become all 
that Jesus was, yet all men, according to their capacity, 
may be filled with the divine life. Indeed, this is what 
man, through sin, has lost ; and which is now his supreme 
need, and is w r hat Jesus, the Son of man and the Son 
of God, has come to restore. He was a Divine Man ; and 
because of that Divineness which filled Him with the 
fullness and consciousness of God, His Name stands in 
the baptismal formula as the Son, — the Son of the 
Eternal God, — God's representative on the earth, who 
came to seek and save the lost. 



48 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



The above exposition relates chiefly, as it must to be 
helpful, to the incarnate Christ. What he was before the 
incarnation as the only begotten Son of God in the bosom 
of the Father, is a deep mystery, and there we should 
leave it. The incarnate Christ is God with us ; and so 
we know, love and trust Him as Lord and Master, and 
are baptized into His name as Son of God. To go beyond 
this is to bewilder ourselves to no profit, as history shows. 
In any case, we may not substitute human dogma for the 
obvious consensus of the Word of God on such a subject 
as that of Jesus the Christ of God, the Son of God and 
the Saviour of the world. 

(3) In the third place, what does the term Holy Ghost 
signify in the new and full name of God as Jesus revealed 
it in His baptismal formula? Is the Holy Spirit a dis- 
tinct person separate from God? Or, by this name should 
we mean some manifestation of God's eternal Spirit, 
made comprehensible to us through the revelation of the 
Father and Son. as everywhere present, — though un- 
seen, — to inspire, guide and sanctify all who open their 
hearts to His gracious in-coming? In other words, is 
the Holy Spirit the still, small voice of God, taking, as 
Jesus indicated, the things of the Father and of the Son, 
and making them known in the hearts of men : in the very 
consciousnesses of those who seek divine light and life 
from the Spirit of God? If this statement is not quite 
clear and definite, it is what, and all, the Scriptures reveal 
on the subject, and all that the mind of man is able 
clearly to comprehend. The very thought of such a pos- 
sible relation to the Spirit of the infinite God is wonderful 
to contemplate! It should inspire faith, hope and love, 
and lead all who accept the possibility of such a oneness 
with God through the Holy Spirit, to a life of thoughtful- 



THE TRI-UNITY OF GOD. 



49 



ness and holy living, that they may reach their high call- 
ing as sons and daughters of their heavenly Father. 

This view of the Holy Spirit is sustained by the words 
of Jesus, spoken to His disciples, for their comfort, on the 
evening of His betrayal. He said to them : It is expedi- 
ent for you that I go away ; for if I go away I will send 
the Comforter unto you, and He shall take the things 
of mine and show them unto you. He shall lead you into 
all truth. This same deliverance for substance is several 
times repeated, and so is made emphatic. These sayings 
clearly reveal, first, that the great things that the Com- 
forter or Holy Spirit was to expound and impress were 
the things that Jesus had spoken of Himself, of His 
Father; and of the great "good news" that had been 
brought to men. Second, that the enlightenment and 
spiritual help that the Holy Comforter should bring to 
men would be more and better for them than even the 
continuance of Jesus Himself, in visible form, could be. 
This promise of the Father no less than of the Son, began 
to be fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, which inaugu- 
rated the Dispensation of the Spirit, — the greatest of all 
Dispensations, — and has been the foremost spiritual 
power in the world ever since, and will be to the end. 

As showing yet more fully the interchangeable rela- 
tionship that existed between Father, Son and Holy 
Spirit, we must refer again to Christ's words, where He 
said, "I and My Father are one;" and, again, — as if 
taking the place of the Spirit,— "I will be with you 
always, even to the end of the world ;" and, "Where two 
or three are gathered in My Name there am I in the midst 
of them." There was a Divine Unity, a oneness, as well 
as Tri-Unity, in this three-fold relation and manifesta- 
tion of God; and yet, as regards the one Eternal God, 



So 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



there was no distinct Tri-Personality. It was one Eternal 
God differently revealed. 

This will appear more evident if we pass from the pre- 
ceding analytic presentation and look further into the 
synthetic import of Christ's new baptismal name for God. 
Back of all, and over all, stands the Eternal First Cause 
of all things that, — as was seen in the preceding chap- 
ter, — possessed complete personality; but beyond that, 
to human reason, was incomprehensible. Then, later, 
we have that same incomprehensible God revealed to us 
by Jesus in the new, endearing relationship of Father ; a 
view of God that w r e can understand and appreciate. 
Then we have a yet further revelation of the infinite God 
in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the 
son of man, who was the express image of the First 
Cause, known to us as Eternal God ; and He was called 
the Son of God because God so dw T elt in Him as to make 
Him Divine, and the impersonation of the one only living 
and true God embodied in human form. 

Then, last of all, the Eternal God is revealed to us, not 
only as Father and Son, but as Spirit. God, said Jesus, 
is a Spirit, and those who worship Him must wor- 
ship in spirit and in truth. How the Holy Spirit of 
God operates upon the heart to bring it into a new life, 
we can no more explain than we can explain how the 
human spirit directs and controls one's bodily move- 
ments. "The wind bloweth where it listeth ; we hear 
the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh or 
whither it goeth ; so is every one who is born of the 
Spirit/' Thus we arrive at the Scriptural and rational 
conception of the Tri-Unity of God. We have three dis- 
tinct manifestations of the One only living and true God. 

Possibly this more formal statement is allowable. The 



THE TRI-UNITY OF GOD. 



51 



Father is one with the Eternal First Cause of all things 
whom we call God, because the nature or being of God 
is in Him and is revealed through Him : the Son, ema- 
nating from the Father, is consciously one with Him, 
because the Father is in the Son and is revealed through 
Him : the Holy Spirit is one in being with the Son and 
the Father, because the same eternal nature that is in the 
Father and Son is in the Spirit. These three manifesta- 
tions of the one eternal, incomprehensible First Cause, 
Jesus, in His baptismal formula, called Father, Son and 
Holy Ghost, — one God, or, rather, three manifestations 
and revelations of the one Absolute Being, who, in this 
three-fold manner, is revealed to men as one God. More 
than this the Scriptures do not reveal, and the Christian 
teachers of the first two centuries did not claim. 

If this view of the Tri-Unity does not retain the letter 
of the old theory of Tri-Personality, it does its spirit, 
which is more than the letter; and this, too, without 
contradicting reason. It is in, and through this Tri- 
Unity that we can truly know God ; and when this great 
revelation is made complete to the spiritual apprehen- 
sion of men, so that they know God and Jesus Christ, 
whom He hath sent, as the Holy Spirit reveals Him* 
then the heart of the world will be moved as it never was 
before, and a nation will be born in a day. 

The Tri-Unity of God, so wonderfully revealed to 
mankind, was for a purpose ; and for a purpose great 
enough to be proportionate to the infinitude of the reve- 
lation. That purpose related to the human race, and. 
could have been nothing less than its eternal salvation: 
All was done that mankind might have life, and have it- 
more abundantly. For any purpose less than this would 
God have sent His Divine Son into the world to suffer 



52 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



and die on the cross? For any smaller purpose would 
God have revealed Himself to us as our loving Father, 
whose heart goes out yearningly to His earthly children 
for their salvation? Would the Holy Spirit of God 
persevere from age to age in seeking entrance into the 
hearts of men for any other purpose than to bring them 
more and more into His own likeness, and so into eternal 
lif$? All this must have been God's purpose in this 
glorious revelation of Himself to men. 

Will God's great purpose in this infinite revelation 
of Himself to men finally be realized? or, will it fail? On 
the answer to this question turns the Final Destiny of 
mankind. If the great proportion of all who have lived, 
and are now living on the earth, are to become eternally 
miserable, then the great purpose fails. If the large pro- 
portion of the human family reach, under Divine guid- 
ance, eternal blessedness, and, if to none existence shall 
prove an infinite curse, then God's great purpose will 
have been accomplished. Which of the alternatives is 
the more probable? 



THE HONOR, JUSTICE AND LOVE OF GOD. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE HONOR, JUSTICE AND LOVE OF GOD 
IN THE PROBLEM. 

If God is worthy of the devout adoration, of the 
supreme love, and of the faithful service of all mankind, 
as He is, then that worthiness must centre in His moral 
character. God may be our Creator, He may possess 
infinite knowledge, infinite power, and be omnipresent; 
yet, if His moral character is unknown or misjudged, 
men may be awed at the thought of Him, and filled with 
dread and slavish fear ; but, from that point of view alone, 
God cannot be venerated and tenderly loved. 

The moral character of God may be, and has been, 
by the great majority of mankind sadly misconceived 
and misrepresented. It is often difficult for us to dis- 
cover accurately the real character of our fellowmen, 
even of those with whom we may be closely associated. 
We know their physical and mental qualities, but their 
hearts, their motives and their deep fountains of life we 
do not know: here we are left to conjecture, and often 
w T e fall into serious mistakes. Most people are masked. 

How much more then are men liable to misapprehend 
the heart of God, whom they cannot see, who is Himself 
robed in cloud and mystery, whose providences seem 
often dark and frowning, if not cold and unsympathetic. 
It does not seem strange that, in the early period of 
human history, men should have feared God, and trem- 
bled at the thought of Him, much as they would in the 



54 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY, 



presence of an active volcano or of a terrific ocean storm. 
It is not a marvel that men often thought of God as the 
opposite of good, that they invested Him in their 
imaginations almost with demoniac qualities, and wor- 
shiped Him as the spirit of evil whose vengeance was 
to be appeased. 

Xor. is it very unnatural that men should so gen- 
erally have turned away from the worship of God to the 
adoration of nature. Worship something man must ; for 
the spirit of worship was born with him. and is a part 
of Himself. Religion was an element of his being; and 
so, not knowing God. he worshiped what seemed to 
emblemize the Almighty. He adored the sun and moon 
as the source of light, life and beauty: so that fire wor- 
shipers composed a large branch of the human family, 
and do still. Others, who were reverential towards their 
parents, worshiped their ancestors instead of God, and 
do to this day. Still others of a lower and more degraded 
type did homage to blocks of wood and stone which 
their own hands had formed, and which, to the wiser ones 
were thought, in some mystic way, to symbolize the un- 
known God. 

Even the Hebrews, who regarded themselves as being 
God's peculiar people, could not be restrained from idol 
worship. They even made a golden calf and danced 
around it saying, this is our Cxod : and they did this under 
the flaming mount all aglow with Divine radiance. They 
thought of the God of Israel as being their especial God, 
and yet as only one of the many gods of the nations. 
They invested their God with a character like their own: 
as they themselves were creatures of passion, of anger, 
of hate and malice, of jealousy, of wrath and revenge, 
so thev conceived their God to be the same. He was 



THE HONOR, JUSTICE AND LOVE OF GOD. 55 

one like themselves, only vastly greater, whom they must 
propitiate. 

The earlier writings of the Old Testament were in 
part a reflection and perpetuation of these common mis- 
takes as to the moral character of God. 

But, let not the men of our day be too severe on the 
idolaters and mistaken souls of other times. Is the 
character of God, as Christ presented and illustrated it, 
seen clearly, and fully accepted, by the people of our 
day, or even by a large proportion of the Christian 
Church? God is still in Christian lands and within the 
Church to some extent, more an object of fear than of 
love ; and men are often religious more to appease God 
and to escape hell than to be pure in heart. If all people 
knew God as He is, knew Him in their hearts as Christ 
knew and revealed Him, the spirit of the world would 
be revolutionized in a day. These illustrations are in- 
tended to show how the real character of God is mis- 
conceived by men, and misrepresented. 

This brings us directly to the question : In what does 
the moral character of God consist? Moral character 
and personality are not interchangeable terms. Per- 
sonality underlies moral character, and is that out of 
which it springs. Moral character in God and in man 
is essentially the same when man is good ; the difference 
being in degree, not in kind. Man is finite, and, with 
the best of intentions makes mistakes. God's attributes 
are infinite so that mistakes are impossible. God's moral 
character, and man's also, consists in the best possible 
use of all His natural powers. This is the one rule of 
duty for God and man. Metaphysically speaking God's 
character consists in good intentions, in choice, in ulti- 
mate choice, in the choice of the highest good of the 



56 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



universe and of every being that exists. God is love. 
This is the sum of His moral attributes and of His char- 
acter. 

Love in God is more than an emotion ; it is choice, it 
is benevolence, (bene volens) good willing. God wills 
and purposes the highest good of all His creatures, and 
He seeks that good by every means that wisdom and 
power, controlled by love, can devise. Every moral 
attribute in God is but the modification of love. His 
holiness is love of righteousness or moral purity, and 
the hatred of all that is dishonorable and wrong. Jus- 
tice is love upholding righteous law and the interests 
it protects. Mercy is love desiring and seeking the 
pardon and restoration of the unworthy. Love then is 
the heart of God, and all that He is and does is but the 
expression of His love. This philosophic conception 
of God is just beginning to take possession of the 
thought and heart of the Christian world. 

If God is love then He is not that stern and awful 
Being ever watching for the faults of men, and remorse- 
less in punishment of sin, that some of the traditional 
theories have represented. The Eternal One is equally 
loving, tender and merciful with our Lord Jesus Christ 
"who is the express image of His person/' who came 
of the Father's sending, and who is "God manifest in 
the flesh/' Christ and the Father are one; so that to 
know Christ is to know God. 

That the moral character of God is absolutely perfect, 
is a fact to be assumed not argued. As an abstract 
proposition no thoughtful mind, as to theory, ever calls 
it in question. Deep down in every soul there lies the 
conception and standard of moral perfection. God placed 
it there, and our own moral nature instinctively affirms 



THE HONOR, JUSTICE AND LOVE OF GOD. 57 

that this ideal standard must be a transcript of God 
Himself. However imperfect our own characters may 
be, and however erroneous our doctrinal beliefs on 
other subjects, there is yet something in the conscience 
and consciousness of all men that, beyond the need of 
other proof, obliges them to ascribe perfection to God, 
and instantly to reject the contrary idea. It was this 
that led Whittier to say : 

"The wrong that pains my soul below, I dare not ' 
throne above/' 

And this same monitor instructed Plato, four hundred 
years B. C. in the midst of surrounding idolatries to tes- 
tify thus : "God is in no way whatever unrighteous ; but 
He is righteous in the highest possible degree, and noth- 
ing is more like Him than the one of us who shall be- 
copie supremely just." 

This also led Job in the midst of his awful darkness 
and doubt to exclaim : "Shall mortal man be more just 
than God? Shall man be more pure than his Maker?" 

This comparative view of God and man brings us to 
the question of mutual relationships. What relation of 
duty does man sustain to God, and God to man? 

Man's duties to God are plain. Loving obedience is 
the law ; and every act of disobedience is a great wrong 
done to a loving Father who is more ready to forgive 
than the child is to ask forgiveness. God should have 
our deepest reverence and our tenderest love, our fervent 
gratitude and our faithful service. His will should be 
our law and rule of life ; not because it is the foundation 
of moral obligation, but because it is always in the direc- 
tion of perfect love and perfect right, and so is best for 
all concerned. We are never to forget that every good 



58 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



and perfect gift comes from the hand of our Heavenly 
Father, and that His judgments are in love. 

While man's duties to God are plain, and easy for 
those who have the spirit of loving obedience still, we 
are not to overlook the equally important fact that God 
also has duties on His part toward the moral beings 
whom He has created, and created in His own image, so 
that they are His children and He their Father. I know 
there are people who object to the idea, and think it 
irreverent, to claim that God can be under any obliga- 
tions to created beings. They say that God is a law unto 
Himself and is above all law. God is a law unto Him- 
self, and so, in an important sense, is every moral being 
that God has made in His own image a law unto him- 
self. This is Paul's doctrine where he said of those who 
had not the written law, that they were a law unto them- 
selves, their own consciences approving or disapproving 
their conduct. 

God's sense of duty no less than of sympathy, obliges 
Him to feel a deep and abiding interest in the eternal 
welfare of the human race that He has brought into 
existence and placed, as man is conditioned in this world. 
When He sees mankind struggling in the whirlpool of 
ignorance, temptation and sin, does He turn away, as 
the Priest and Levite turned from the man who had 
fallen among thieves, saying, I have no responsibility? 
Man might do this but God never. He never leaves a 
human being uncared for in such a situation ! The very 
idea is preposterous, and a reproach on the Almighty. 
Think of the father of a large family of children, each 
one in great need, and in danger of perishing, and the 
father, having in his hands abundant means of relief, 
but excusing himself on the ground that it was not his 



THE HONOR, JUSTICE AND LOVE OF GOD. 59 

responsibility, and that he was under no obligations to 
those children ! The world would pronounce such a 
man a monster. But God is infinitely removed from 
that situation. He knows and feels the duty and respon- 
sibility, and more than meets it, superadding Mercy to 
Justice at every point, in every case of need. Who can 
think otherwise? 

If God is under moral obligation as men are, and 
higher in proportion as He is greater and wiser than men, 
then it becomes a question of first importance to ask, 
what is the standard or measure of obligation? There 
can be but one measure of obligation for moral beings, 
and it applies equally to God, angels and men. Ability 
is the measure of obligation, and I can conceive of no 
other. In the nature of things it must be so. To de- 
mand more than man could render would be cruelty; 
to accept less would be to countenance sin. This is the 
Bible standard, which reads : "It is accepted according 
to what a man hath and not according to what he hath 
not." I am aware that the rule of ability as the measure 
of obligation has, sometimes, for reasons to be hereafter 
explained, been questioned or denied ; and yet the law 
is so obviously just, and of such universal application, 
as to call for neither argument or qualification. 

As applied to the God of honor, justice and love, what 
does the rule enjoin? Nothing more or less than that 
God shall do for His universe, and for every moral being 
that He has brought into existence, all that, everything 
considered, He can do to promote universal and in- 
dividual well-being. There must be no favoritism, and 
higher interests must not be sacrificed to lower. Ability 
measures God's obligations just as it does man's ; and it 
must be greater than man's in proportion as his ability 



60 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

and opportunity are greater. It must be so, and I honor 
the loving God in saying it. 

Questions of responsibility and duty, with which all 
moral beings have to do, are of two classes : Questions of % 
judgment, and questions of conscience. Questions of 
judgment are addressed to the intellect, and are decided 
by evidence in the court of the understanding. Among 
these are questions of philosophy, of science, of history, 
and those questions which concern most of the every- 
day affairs of life. 

But questions of conscience are of an entirely different 
character. Here no investigation is called for. The 
answer is always instantaneous and absolute ; because 
it is simply yes or no, to a question of right or wrong, 
addressed, not to the intellect but to the conscience. 
Certain great principles of right, justice and honor are 
engraved by our Creator in the moral nature of every 
man, and in such a way that they become a part of him- 
self. God put them there. 

Cudworth, after showing that the Divine and human 
reason are one, says : "Conscience is a ray from the Di- 
vine Reason ; and the moral law, which it reveals to us, 
is Eternal and Immutable as the nature of God, and the 
nature of things." 

Gaius, who wrote in the XII century, said: "The law 
of nature is that law of justice and benevolence which is 
written in the heart of every man and which teaches to 
do unto others as he would wish that they should do 
unto him." These principles are moral intuitions, some- 
times called truths of nature, innate conceptions, first 
truths or truths of reason ; but these terms all mean 
essentially the same thing. They are the voice of con- ■ 
science, God's voice in the heart of man. This voice 



THE HONOR, JUSTICE AXD LOVE OF GOD. 6l 



of moral intuition never falters, never errs, and never 
varies. Propound a series of moral questions like the 
following: Is injustice towards another ever right? Is 
every man bound by the law of duty? Is cruelty a crime? 
Is honorable action commendable? Is an unreasonable 
demand justifiable? Ask numberless such questions, 
and there is something in every man called moral nature 
or conscience that responds instantly; and every moral 
being in existence whether from heaven, earth or hell, 
if he does not intentionally lie. gives, on the instant, and 
without reflection, the same answer. 

These intuitive principles of right, honor and justice 
are the foundation principles of all government human 
and Divine. Take them out of the heart of man and the 
world has no standard of appeal. They are always and 
everywhere recognized as binding upon all men in their 
relations to each other. 

Are they not equally binding upon God Himself? They 
must be. for moral relations are universal and absolute. 
They must be if God is God, and is worthy of the con- 
fidence and love of the moral beings whom He has 
created. God can do nothing that is wrong, dishonor- 
able, unreasonable or unjust. 

There are moral principles and questions that relate 
especially to men. and there are others in which God 
Himself is more directly concerned. Among the latter, 
which bear directly on the problem of Human Destiny, 
and God's relation to it, are the following: 

1. That the distinction between honor and dishonor, 
justice and injustice, right and wrong is fundamental 
and can never be set aside. This is undeniable. It is 
common sense and common sense is moral intuition. 

2. Any assumption that puts dishonor or blame on 



62 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



God is false. The integrity of God is and must be held 
as above suspicion at whatever cost. 

3. That moral and accountable action is not accident 
or misfortune but intelligent choice. Intention is and 
must be the test of character. 

4. To require of one what he cannot do, and then to 
blame and punish him for not doing what was impossi- 
ble, is simple cruelty. It involves a double wrong; the 
command is unjust, and then the penalty is a crime. 

5. To punish the innocent instead of the guilty is 
either a blunder or a crime. The innocent may suffer 
voluntarily but may never be punished. 

6. That when persons of inexperience are placed in 
responsible positions where great personal and moral 
interests are at stake, they must be given a fair chance 
of success. The chance of a favorable outcome must be 
at least equal to that of an unfavorable one. Common 
justice demands all this and more. 

7. To declare one guilty and deserving of eternal 
punishment for what he is said to have done ages before 
he was born or existed is a monstrous absurdity as a 
theory, and, if it be a fact, it is infinitely worse than ab- 
surd. 

8. To punish one for what he never did or thought of 
doing or knew about, would be a crime against justice. 
So any court would decide. 

9. God's heart and hand must be unchangeably on 
the side of this struggling world to do for the present 
and future well-being of every member of the human 
race, all that infinite wisdom and power, controlled by 
love, can do. Intuitive justice demands this. 

Truths and principles like these are moral intuitions, 
and are always so recognized and treated by all thought- 



THE HONOR, JUSTICE AND LOVE OF GOD. 63 

ful persons, except, possibly, in some cases where theo- 
logical dogma necessitates another conclusion. Then 
dogma is made to prevail over right. 

Pascal and Abelard, after long struggle, both came to 
the conclusion that God's dealings with mankind, as 
their creed compelled them to see it, was in violation of 
these principles of justice, and honor, and right that are 
conceded to be the intuitive convictions of all moral 
beings. They both argued that God's ways with men, 
as seen in the light of their creed, could not be justified 
on principles of right and honor; and their only way of 
escape from bringing God into condemnation was to 
affirm that the intuitions of reason which were binding 
upon all men, under all circumstances, were not obliga- 
tory upon God, whom they conceived of as above law, 
and having the right to do according to the counsels of 
His own will even when that will was against right and 
justice, as reason and conscience are compelled to decide. 
What must God think of apologies like this made in 
His behalf, and also of theological dogmas that neces- 
sitate such an apology ! 

Another class of writers upon this point, while seem- 
ing to hold the opinions of Pascal and Abelard endeavor 
to escape their conclusion in a less bold and, as it seems 
to me, less manly way. They acknowledge the contra- 
diction, but attempt no explanation. The whole thing 
they resolve into a fathomless mystery. We must ac- 
cept the Creed on faith and leave God to justify Himself 
as best He can. This subject is only referred to here, 
as it bears upon the divine character, and will come up 
in its place for further study. 

It is a pleasure to be able to testify that most theolo- 
gians, even of the sternest systems of belief, do recognize 



6 4 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



and teach that the intuitions of reason and conscience 
are universally obligatory, and not less so in heaven than 
on earth. Dr. Alexander says, that : "Where we have 
intuitive certainty of anything it is foolish to seek for 
other reasons, and that all intuitively discern that for a 
ruler to punish the innocent is wrong." He afterwards 
repeats this in substance. Dr. Hodge writes : "Proba- 
tion to be fair must afford as favorable a prospect of a 
happy as of an unhappy conclusion. " Melancthon is 
most emphatic in supporting the supreme authority of 
man's instinctive principles of right and justice. Speak- 
ing on the subject, he says : "Therefore our decision is 
this ; that those precepts which learned men have com- 
mitted to writing transcribing them from the common 
reason and common feelings of human nature are to be 
accounted as not less Divine than those contained in the 
tables given to Moses ; and that it could not be the in- 
tention of our Maker to supersede by a law graven on 
stone that which is written by His own finger on the 
table of the heart." 

The following are the words of John Calvin : "Since 
all nations are spontaneously inclined to enact laws for 
themselves, it is too clear to be doubted that there are 
certain conceptions of justice and right which exist by 
nature in the minds of men." Turretin, Augustine, Ed- 
wards, the Puritans, and indeed, the theological thinkers 
of the world, except when driven for the time by dogma- 
tic necessities to say what implies the opposite, support 
the position that the intuitive principles of right and 
wrong are absolute moral law, and are equally binding 
upon God and man. 

And, of course, the Bible is in line with this view. 
Christ in His contention with the Jews, said : "Why 



THE HONOR, JUSTICE AND LOVE OF GOD. 65 

even of yourselves judge ye not what is right." Abra- 
ham, in his plea for the Sodomites, exclaimed : "Shall 
not the Judge of all the earth do right." Ezekiel con- 
cludes his argument in vindication of God's ways with 
men, thus : "Are not my ways equal and are not your 
ways unequal? Saith the Lord." 

It follows then that the intuitive principles of honor, 
right and justice that God has written in the minds and 
consciences of all moral beings are of supreme authority, 
and alike so with God and man. What does this un- 
deniable conclusion touching man's condition in this 
world, and his consequent relations to the great problem 
of human destiny involve? 

It means that God has placed the human race, as it 
actually exists on earth, in a condition favorable to vir- 
tue, and with a better prospect of a favorable termination 
than of an unfavorable one, a better prospect of eternal 
life than of eternal death. If God had the power to do 
this, the principle of intuitive justice demands that it 
should be done. And if He had not such power, then 
justice asks why should the race have been created? 
Such a question does not imply "carnal reasoning," it 
is legitimate and proper. God welcomes it because He 
has placed man, and surrounded him in this world, and 
the next, with influences that render a happy conclusion 
more natural and probable than an unhappy one. He 
must have done it because God is just, honorable and 
good. 

Again, the conclusion that intuitive principles of right 
and justice are binding upon God, means that sin, as 
God sees it, consists in sinning, and in nothing else; 
and that sin always implies intelligence and a willful, 
intentional violation of God's law; and also that men 



66 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



are justly punishable or otherwise for what they do in- 
telligently, and for nothing else. These statements har- 
monize with moral intuitions, and opposite views con- 
tradict moral intuitions ; therefore the position taken 
must be true, for God is a God of honor and justice. 

Instinctive principles of right and honor demand that 
God shall not subject the race of men to needless and 
unreasonable perils by giving them such a nature and 
environment as to make it certain that not "one in ten 
thousand millions/' will escape at the very beginning of 
moral existence, or even before, the loss of God's favor, 
the incurring of His "wrath" and consequent condemna- 
tion to eternal misery. Such a thing is impossible for 
a just, benevolent and holy God to do. 

Principles of right and justice mean that God's heart 
and purpose are always on the side of men for their 
eternal good. God is considerate of man's earthly con- 
dition and is ever merciful. He is more the loving 
Father of mankind than He is their stern Judge. He 
never hates His children even when they are disobedient ; 
He is not angry with them when they are wicked. He 
is never revengeful towards them, whatever they do or 
say. Such terms, when used in Scripture, are employed 
in accommodation to human ignorance and weakness. 
They apply to men, but never to God in the sense in 
which men understand and use them in their relations 
with each other. God is grieved when His children go 
wrong; their persistent wickedness displeases Him, so 
that He is often obliged to bring chastisement upon them 
for their good, as loving fathers do upon their disobe- 
dient children. But He does not hate them, and is not 
angry with them and revengeful towards them, as bad 



THE HONOR, JUSTICE AND LOVE OF GOD. 67 

people are, and as weak parents sometimes are towards 
their own children. 

Indeed, our Heavenly Father is the opposite of this. 
"As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them 
that fear Him." He pitied Jerusalem when He wept 
over it ; He remembereth that we are dust ; He is in deep 
sympathy with us ; He bears our infirmities and our 
iniquities even, in His own heart, and dies for us that 
we may live and not die. 

The meaning of all this is that God takes into account 
the peculiar and unfavorable circumstances in the midst 
of which we live. He sees more clearly than we can 
how the iniquities of the fathers are often visited upon 
their children. Heredity is against us ; not that the 
children of the wicked are punished for the sins of their 
fathers, — every man shall bear his own iniquities, — but 
they are weakened, enfeebled, badly constituted and in- 
clined to evil on account of heredity. God our Father 
allows for this, and compassionates us, as He clearly 
should. 

God also considers man's environment which is never 
wholly favorable to virtue and is often, without involv- 
ing individual responsibility, evil, and only evil con- 
tinually. God sees and feels it all, and on this ground 
again, He is compassionate and long-suffering toward 
us. 

Our Heavenly Father knows that w r e all come into 
the world with strong animal and selfish propensities, 
and that, when we do our best, it is nearly or quite im- 
possible for the higher nature, so weak in all at the be- 
ginning, and w T ith some always weak, to control and 
regulate appetites, passions and other selfish tendencies, 
so as to reach and illustrate ideal excellence. In these 



68 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



disadvantages God has for us a father's compassionate 
tenderness. 

Man's ignorance is another element of weakness that 
the loving Father always considers and allows for in His 
estimates and treatment of His children. Moral beings, 
as we have seen, possess intuitive apprehensions of right 
and wrong; while yet, on most of the great questions 
that lie around them, and with which they have to do, 
their minds are in comparative darkness. This is true 
of the wisest of men, and is emphatically so of the young, 
the inexperienced and the uneducated. Because of this 
ignorance we often run into dangers and difficulties un- 
awares. True, ignorance of itself is not sin, but, to a 
certain extent, it is an excuse for shortcoming. Men 
everywhere so regard it ; and God who, if He can, loves 
to excuse His children, is ever disposed to make greater 
allowances for man's ignorance than we make for one 
another; and this because He sees and feels their diffi- 
culties as we cannot. Our Heavenly Father will do for 
every human being that He has brought into the world 
all that infinite w T isdom and infinite power, controlled by 
perfect love can do to secure his eternal welfare. He 
cannot do more; He may not do less. 

This presentation of God's moral character does not 
make the eternal salvation of all men a certainty; but 
does not the whole chapter taken together create an 
atmosphere favorable to such a conclusion, or, at least, 
to something that approaches it? 



THE DOUBLE NATURE OF MAN. 



6 9 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DOUBLE NATURE OF MAN IN THE 
PROBLEM. 

The second greatest factor in the problem of Destiny 
is man himself. Although we know him so well, he is 
still the greatest and deepest of mysteries. "The proper 
study of mankind is man/' To know man's life on the 
earth, to know what that life is, and what the end will be, 
is to solve the great problem. 

Let us study man, — as to his origin; as to his animal 
nature ; as to his moral nature ; as to the conflict between 
the two ; and as to the final result. 

To begin at the beginning : The very existence of man 
on the earth is a great mystery. We know that he is 
here, and that he has been here for thousands of years. 
But just how he came into existence we do not know, 
nor do we know how far back in time his existence 
began. The more this question of dates is searched into, 
the further back does the antiquity of man appear to 
extend. Evidences are increasing that man's existence 
on this globe antedates the last great glacial age. Rude 
stone implements, it is confidently affirmed, are being 
found near Trenton, N. J., and elsewhere, in gravel beds 
that were certainly deposited at the close of the first 
glacial period; and just how far back even the second 
glacial period extends is only vague conjecture. Scien- 
tists are utterly at sea as to the actual antiquity of man. 
They vary in their dates all the way from about ten 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



thousand to fifty, or a hundred thousand years ; and the 
argument for one date or another seems to accord with 
some favorite theory that one or another is trying to 
establish. Most of the discussions on this subject have 
always seemed to me to be ex-parte. Scientific men seem 
able to prove what they wish to have true; and this is 
only saying that they know but little beyond the fact that 
the human race, in its undeveloped state, has been in 
existence many thousands of years. We know certainly 
that man is a created being ; that he was created by some 
mysterious process not yet fully understood; that he 
bears, in his moral nature, the Divine image; and that 
he has been on the earth for a much longer period than 
the commonly accepted chronology allows. 

What is man? The Agnostic pronounces the question 
unanswerable. Man, he declares, cannot know himself, 
nor his God, if he has one, nor anything else with cer- 
tainty; not even his own personal existence. With the 
Materialist only matter exists ; thought and feeling are 
but sensations of the brain ; and when that is disorgan- 
ized, what was called man, ceases to be. Under such . 
theories, our great problem ceases to be great, and is not 
worth considering. 

From the Christian point of view, from that of the 
historic religions of the world, from the voice of moral 
intuition, of conscience and of consciousness, the ques- 
tion, — what is man, w T hence and whither? becomes one 
of the greatest possible interest and importance to man- 
kind. 

Man, as we everywhere find him, possesses a double 
nature. He is drawn in opposite directions. Some- 
times he is good and at others he is very bad. This 
double nature in man is brought out clearly in the 



THE DOUBLE NATURE OF MAN. 



7 1 



seventh chapter of Romans, where the good and evil in 
him are struggling together for the mastery. The same 
thing is most forcibly illustrated in Stevenson's strange 
and striking book entitled "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde/' 
in which, true to life, the same man, at will, puts on 
directly opposite characters and acts accordingly. He 
is never self-consistent as a whole, but is true now to one 
self, and now to the other. He is, as some one has said : 
"An angel on horseback/' 

To be more specific then, man, in the first place, is 
strictly an animal. He comes into the world as other 
animals come, and is subject to similar conditions. He 
appears to have the same instincts, passions and propen- 
sities. They all seek food, protection and comfort alike. 
They all naturally live unto themselves, except that both 
have affection for their own families and for their kind. 
Man, — according to the theory of evolution, which has 
now among all classes, orthodox and heterodox alike, 
come to be extensively accepted, — has, by evolutionary 
process, come up through lower orders of creation. His 
physical nature is an animal nature. Under parental 
and educational guidance, like other animals, he strug- 
gles his way up to maturity; and, when old age comes 
or before, his physical powers fail, as do those of other 
animals, and his mental powers appear to fail also. His 
memory, more of what is just now taking place than of 
things far back in life, usually fails first ; then, his intel- 
lect weakens and becomes clouded ; his sensitiveness 
wears out and, at length, he dies an old man as other 
animals die, weak in mind and body, and who shall say 
that man and beast do not meet together in death as 
they had done in life? Have they not a common destiny? 
As to their animal part, they probably have. This fact 



72 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

that man is a complete animal, but an animal of the high- 
est order, is a great fact that must not be overlooked; 
for, as we shall see, it is the real key that unlocks the 
mystery of man's disordered, demoralized condition in 
this world, and supersedes other metaphysical theories 
that have been adopted for that end. 

In the second place, man is more than an animal. He 
has a spiritual nature superadded to the animal, — a 
spiritual body dwelling in the animal body. "There is 
a natural body and there is a spiritual body." "There is 
a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty 
giveth him understanding/' The real essence of man, 
that in which his worth and vast superiority consists is 
not the body, but the spirit that lives in the body. As 
a physical being only, he is, in many respects, far excelled 
by some other animals. He has not the strength of the 
ox nor the fleetness of the horse; nor can he move 
through the air like a bird, or swim in water like a fish ; 
yet, he is vastly superior to them all, is lord over all, and 
was made to rule, and does rule the whole animal crea- 
tion ; and this because of his superior intellectual and 
moral power. 

Of man alone it was said that he is created in the image 
of God; and this must refer, not as traditional theology 
claims, to God's moral image or character, but to the 
rational and moral attributes of his being. It is obvious 
from the very nature of moral character, or virtue, that 
it cannot be directly created as man himself is created. 
Moral character, good or bad, implies moral action, not 
on God's part, but on that of the being who possesses it. 
It consists in the use one makes of the responsible 
powers that God has given him. It is a thing of growth, 
not of creation, and belongs alone to its possessor. Of 



THE DOUBLE NATURE OF MAN. 



73 



course moral character implies that its possessor is en- 
dowed with those faculties that make virtue or vice 
possible, and it is quite consistent with outside help and 
influence in the use of its powers; but that action in 
which character consists is personal. A mere animal 
cannot be morally good or bad, because it is destitute of 
those powers that make virtue or vice possible. Animals 
are not in God's natural image, men are ; and this is the 
fundamental distinction between them,— the greatest of 
all distinctions. 

Man is a religious being. He was made to worship; 
he must worship. No nation or people ever existed with- 
out religious sentiment and some form of expressing it. 
Herodotus expressed what all wise men have observed, as 
follows : "I have traveled in many lands ; I have found 
peoples without government, without laws, without 
rulers, without literature, and almost without homes or 
clothing; but I have never found a people without altars, 
shrines and temples/' This is a world-wide testimony, 
and proves that religion is the first and instinctive neces- 
sity of man's moral nature. Without religion as a guide 
and support of the people, no nation however civilized 
could long exist. France once tried the experiment, and 
the bloody French Revolution was the fruit. There are 
religions and religions, but the worst religion that ever 
existed is better than none, just as the worst of human 
governments is better than absolute anarchy. 

Man's religious nature is the highest and noblest part 
of his being. It is that which allies him to God, and, if 
rightly used, connects him with all that is good and great 
in the universe, and sets him apart from all evil. Those 
attributes of the human soul which constitute him a 
moral and religious being are: 



74 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



(1) Reason, which apprehends the Infinite and Abso- 
lute; and intelligence that carries him above the law of 
instinct into the realm of abstract truth and makes him 
familiar with the principle and operation of cause and 
effect. In this he differs from the mere animal that is 
governed by instinct, which appears to be limited to 
things necessary to the preservation of physical life. In 
this animals are often sagacious ; but they have no per- 
ception of moral distinctions, and they appear to remain 
stationary, as do their habits, from age to age. But man, 
over against animals, is not only a progressive being, 
but he has an intellect that grasps abstract truth, that 
reasons, compares, concludes, that perceives the infinite, 
and takes in God and eternity and is capable of that 
limitless progress for which he exists. In the words of 
the great Scotch geologist : "Man thinks God's thoughts 
after Him/' 

(2) In addition to intellect, man is endowed with that 
wonderful faculty unknown to animals which we call 
Conscience, or moral intuition. This power in man com- 
pels him to distinguish between right and wrong, to feel 
the fact and weight of moral obligation, and to hear if 
not to heed the call of duty. It is the rewarder of virtue 
and the scourge of vice. It is in the soul of every man 
as the voice of God that is never to be disregarded, and 
whose clear dictate is Divine Law in its highest and 
most authoritative form, from which there is no appeal. 
This great gift of God may, like all others, be perverted 
and crushed; but woe to the man who commits such 
sacrilege against himself and his Maker. Conscience, 
though often stern, is man's nearest and dearest friend, 
through which God works in him to will and to do, and 



THE DOUBLE NATURE OF MAN. 



75 



which, if obeyed, would lead every human soul into 
eternal life. 

(3) In addition to intellect and conscience, man is 
naturally endowed with that most delicate and helpful 
quality of mind which we sometimes call heart, and at 
others sensibility, or the power of feeling and of emotion. 
This quality appears to be especially inborn, since it is 
more apparent and beautiful in children than it is in later 
life. A child's trust is a thing of feeling largely; its 
happiness flows from the same source. Joy and sorrow 
have their fountain in the sensibility. If all ultimate 
good consists in happiness, as Dr. Hopkins and many 
later divines contend, then, indeed, the sensibility, and, 
in this sense, the heart, is the hope of man; for, if this 
freezes over and ceases to beat and sing for joy, all is 
lost. If it be possible, as it is, for one to give too loose 
a rein to feeling, and so be carried off from reason, it is 
equally possible, by crushing out emotion, to become 
dead while we live, — dead to happiness and repellant to 
our fellow beings. Our good Puritan fathers suffered, 
some of them at least, from this cause. Men, like chil- 
dren, can often be led in right ways by appeals to their 
emotional natures, and, up to a reasonable limit, such 
appeals are proper. We find them throughout the Bible ; 
and, doubtless, the happiness of heaven itself consists 
largely in a well-ordered rationalized state of the soul's 
natural sensibilities. Let man's emotional nature, his 
heart, then be wisely cultivated, for through it he will 
find God and heaven. 

(4) In addition to other gifts, man is endowed with 
that mysterious and awful power that is called Will, or 
the power of opposite choice. This will-power is closely 
allied to the sensibility, so that men are apt to choose 



7 6 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



or act as they feel, and yet feeling is one thing and choice 
another. All moral character consists in choice, pur- 
pose, or intention. Take that from man and he becomes 
a mere negative quantity, neither good nor bad. Free 
agency and the power of contrary choice are so nearly 
synonymous terms that one cannot exist without the 
other; and if man is not a free moral agent, then how 
is he accountable to God or man? 

I know that the freedom of the will has been denied, 
but never, except at the demand of some metaphysical 
dogma that must fall if the will is free in its choices alike 
of good and evil ; and even such denial is only in theory 
and never in practice. All men know themselves to be 
free and therefore responsible for what they do, or will 
to do. All government, human and divine, rests upon 
that basis and would be absurd on any other. Universal 
consciousness attests the same conclusion. All courts of 
justice act upon it. Common sense demands it, and a 
denial is too absurd for serious consideration. The will 
is the dominating power around which character, good 
or evil, and so desert and destiny centre. To bring the 
will of man and his life into a right relation to reason, 
to conscience and to God, is the one thing to be secured, 
and the end of Gospel effort. 

These attributes of man's nature are in him in an un- 
developed state, and require careful and persistent culti- 
vation or they will remain weak or fall under the do- 
minion of the lower nature. Every power that God has 
given us must be cultivated or it dwindles and dies. If 
the muscles are not exercised they never develop 
strength. So of the intellect, of the memory, of the will, 
of the sensibility, and of all that goes to make up the 
man. 



THE DOUBLE NATURE OF MAN. 



77 



In a world like this, opportunities for endeavor and 
growth are abundant. We are beset on every hand with 
evils to be overcome, while advantages to be gained lie 
all around us. The world is full of opportunities for all 
who are wise and earnest enough to rightly improve 
them. 

This brings me to speak of the great conflict that is 
going on in man's soul between the two natures that 
God has given him, the animal and the moral. We have 
seen that man is an animal with animal instincts, appe- 
tites and passions ; also, that he is more than an animal, 
being endowed with a religious nature and having reason, 
conscience, sensibility and free will. What relation do 
these two natures sustain each to the other? 

It is obvious from a moment's reflection, and still more 
from a moment's observation, that the two natures in 
man may be out of harmony one with the other. The 
animal may seek to rule the spiritual, and the spiritual 
may claim authority over the animal, and thus we should 
have a house divided against itself. And this is just 
man's condition as we find it everywhere in the world, 
and in the experience of every person that lives. The 
strong pull of the animal in man is downward. It tends 
to sensuality and selfishness. It ever seeks to bring man's 
spiritual nature, his reason, conscience, sensibility and 
most of all his will, into subjection, so that the animal 
shall be master and the spiritual man its bondsman. And 
this beastly part of man is often greatly encouraged and 
strengthened by reason of his heredity and environment. 
Many people, not in the dogmatic sense, but almost liter- 
ally, are conceived in sin and born in iniquity, except 
that the vice in such cases is that of the parent, not of 
the child. Added to this, environment after birth, and 



78 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



often through life, is wholly favorable to animal subju- 
gation and is the foe of virtue. Under such circum- 
stances the rampant, unreasonable and unreasoning part 
of man easily, as the rule, gets control, and rides furi- 
ously, dragging the spirit into sin and death. 

This is one side of the case. The other side is, that 
the spirit in man was made to rule, and can, if it will, rule 
the lower nature. Reason, conscience, and will were 
made to be, can be, and should be supreme over passion 
and every form of selfish indulgence. This is possible 
because the opposite is sin, and sin is never a necessity. 
But, in the great conflict, the higher nature is at disad- 
vantage because at birth the child, to human view, is 
an animal. Its spiritual nature is there but in germ 
form only. Reason, conscience, and power of moral 
choice are not there as potent forces ; while the animal 
instincts are all there and in force from birth. Conse- 
quently, before moral agency begins the lower nature 
has gained control, so that afterwards it is not easily 
dispossessed. 

Just here begins the struggle. The higher nature sets 
itself against the lower, and claims authority over it, so 
that selfishness shall be dethroned and reason and con- 
science hold sway. If this is accomplished, and in pro- 
portion as it is, man is on the side of God and moral 
purity. Failure here is entrance into sin, which is the 
broad road to death, and is death utter and eternal, unless 
deliverance is obtained. This great struggle between 
man's lower and higher nature, as was said, is clearly 
brought out in the seventh chapter of Romans, from the 
14th verse onward, as follows : 

"For we know that the law is spiritual ; but I am carnal, 
sold under sin. For that which I do, I allow not ; for what 



THE DOUBLE NATURE OF MAN. 



79 



I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that I do. If, 
then, I do that which I would not, I consent unto the 
law that it is good. Now, then, it is no more I that do 
it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me 
(that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing ; for to will 
is present with me; but how to perform that which is 
good I find not. For the good that I would do I do not ; 
but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if 
I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but 
sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I 
would do good, evil is present with me ; for I delight 
in the law of God after the inward man ; but I see another 
law in my members warring against the law of my mind 
and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which 
is in my members, O, wretched man that I am, who 
shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" 

Nowhere in human language is this great struggle be- 
tween the animal and the spiritual natures of man stated 
so forcibly as in these words of Paul. And the saddest 
fact in the case is that, when left to himself, struggle as 
one may, the animal nature, not always, but on the whole, 
triumphs over the spiritual ; so that God must directly 
intervene and come to the rescue, or there is no hope. 
This is Bible doctrine, and it is also man's actual experi- 
ence. But God has come to the rescue. He has sent His 
own Son into the world to destroy the works of the devil, 
to give help to every man in time of need, to bring com- 
plete deliverance and full salvation to all who open their 
hearts to His light and guidance. It is in view of this 
fact that, after describing, as just quoted, the struggle 
into which man by nature is thrown, and also his hope- 
less condition, that Paul looks away from self and earth 
to God and the Gospel of His dear Son for deliverance, 



8o 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



exclaiming, in answer to the question : "Who shall de- 
liver us?" : "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
So, then, with the mind (or higher nature) I serve the 
law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." (As Christ 
and His Gospel in the great problem is to be a chapter 
by itself, its study here is omitted.) 

The view here given of the double nature of man fur- 
nishes, as I believe, a key to the explanation of one of 
the greatest and most perplexing facts and mysteries 
to be found in human history. That fact is the low moral 
condition of mankind, known in theological writings as 
"Total depravity." This doctrine is so generally main- 
tained that it may be considered a doctrine of the Chris- 
tian Church. The w r orld of mankind, it claims, is by 
"nature averse to all good and propense to all evil." The 
natural ability to do good, if man ever had it, has gone 
from him, so that all he does, unless regenerated by the 
Holy Spirit, is only evil and evil continually. 

Those who accept this doctrine of the creeds only in 
part are yet compelled to admit the sinfulness, destruc- 
tiveness and general selfishness of mankind as revealed 
in Scripture, in history, and in the personal lives of men. 
Of all the destructive creatures that ever came into this 
world, man heads the list. Wild beasts are nothing in 
comparison. Men not only destroy other animals by 
countless millions, and often wantonly, but they prey 
upon each other. In the early ages, and everywhere now 
among uncivilized people, war is man's chief occupation. 
The most fearful descriptions of human depravity any- 
where to be found do not overstate essential facts. Paul's 
description, in the first chapter of the Romans, is a fair 
sample of literature on this subject, and reveals the truth. 

How is this low moral condition of the race to be ex- 



THE DOUBLE NATURE OF MAN. 8 1 

plained? Just here thoughtful people disagree. The 
common explanation runs as follows : About six thousand 
years ago God created the first human pair from which 
the whole human race has descended. He made them 
in His own moral image, beautiful and perfect, physically, 
intellectually and morally. They actualized the highest 
ideal conceptions of perfect manhood. It is needless to 
say that most of this is unsupported by Scripture, science 
or fact. Tradition lies back of it. But, to go on ; Adam 
and Eve were placed in a beautiful garden where they 
were permitted to eat of all the fruit except from one tree. 
They disobeyed and ate the forbidden fruit, "And so 
brought death into the world, and all our woes." 

In Adam the whole human race, it is claimed, fell, be- 
came utterly corrupt, totally depraved and lost the power 
of choosing good. Consequent upon Adam's fall and 
the fall of the race in Adam, the world of mankind has 
sunk into the corrupt and corrupting condition that his- 
tory and experience reveal. 

This theory of the "Fall" has been made one of the 
chief foundation stones of Christian theology for the last 
fifteen hundred years. Hundreds of volumes have been 
written and thousands of sermons preached, mainly in 
its defence ; it is confidently insisted, that, upon no other 
ground can the moral condition of mankind past and 
present be accounted for. Pascal voices the general 
sentiment when he says : "Nothing shocks us more than 
this doctrine ; and yet, without this mystery — the most 
incomprehensible of all — we are incomprehensible to our- 
selves/' 

Just here, I am obliged to take issue, and insist that 
the double nature of man, and consequent conflict as 
above described, gives a natural, reasonable and suffi- 



82 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



cient explanation of the dark mystery. If the general 
principle of evolution is true — I care nothing for phrases 
and details — then man was not made as a machine is 
constructed, but he grew slowly into existence as a man. 
coming up from lower to higher forms of life until, at 
length, he reached the point where moral agency begins, 
and where he distinguishes between right and wrong. 
He became, then, not a creature of instinct, of hope and 
fear only, but of reason, conscience and free will. This 
brought him into the natural, not moral, image of God. in 
which man, when he became man. was created. 

But, as we have seen, he was now possessed of two 
natures ; the old animal nature that remained, and the 
new moral or spiritual nature that was superadded, These 
two natures, as we have also seen, came into conflict, and 
the lower nature, for a long time, and to a great extent, 
prevailed over the higher. 

I submit this hypothesis, instead of the commonly ac- 
cepted theory, as the correct and sufficient explanation 
of the low and sinful condition of mankind, as it has 
existed and still exists. And, I repeat, that this view 
takes the whole subject out of the field of mystery, tradi- 
tion and improbability, and makes the vexed question 
simple, natural and reasonable. The view concedes and 
explains facts, harmonizes discord and commends itself 
to good, practical common sense. If it does this. then, it 
should quell the spirit of controversy and quietly correct 
errors that have grown logically out of the old way of 
thinking; all of which I am sure would be to millions of 
good people an unspeakable relief. 

One other question remains to be asked : What is 
likely to be the final outcome of the great struggle that is 
going on between the two natures of man? I think all 



THE DOUBLE NATURE OP MAN. 



83 



will agree that the reality and greatness of the struggle 
have not been overdrawn. It exists. It ever has existed. 
Will it ever end, and, if so, how? 

Such a conflict cannot last always. One nature or the 
other will finally get the mastery. The human race is 
still in its infancy; it does not yet appear what it will be. 
Great progress in many parts of the world has already 
been attained. The tide of advance in which the higher 
nature is evidently prevailing over the lower, was never 
so marked, the world over, as it is now. Think of the 
progress in all directions that has been made in the last 
fifty, or even twenty-five years. The next century is likely 
to become the glory of all the centuries, and to witness 
triumphs, not only of mind over matter, but of man's 
higher nature over the lower on a grander scale than has 
ever been known. 

And, besides, God Himself is, and ever has been, in 
the movement. Who can believe that He has brought 
such a race of beings into existence and cared for them 
so long, only to see all ground of hope fade away, and 
the light go out in utter darkness, as it would, if man's 
higher nature in which he is allied to God is to be finally 
overmastered by animal instincts. God created man for 
a glorious end, and He always accomplishes what He 
undertakes. The very honor of God appears to be in- 
volved in the final issue of the human race. The problem 
of man's destiny must have a happy solution, else, why 
was he created? I am sure God would never have 
brought a race like ours into existence just to make it 
miserable. It may take many more centuries to bring 
about the Divine purpose ; but time with God is as 
nothing. "One day is as a thousand years, and a thou- 
sand years as one day." But time has a limit, and, in 



8 4 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



the end, good must prevail over evil, light must arise out 
of darkness, and life come out of death. It must be so, 
because this is God's method of working. It must be 
so, because the infinite wisdom and power of God are 
controlled by perfect love, and love is the mightiest thing 
in the whole universe. When the animal in man is sub- 
dued by the spiritual, the problem of Final Destiny is 
solved, because then holiness and happiness are universal. 



CREATION BY EVOLUTION. 



85 



CHAPTER VI. 

CREATION BY EVOLUTION IN THE PROBLEM. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer has said : "Religion and Science 
are necessarily correlatives; that, while our conscious- 
ness of nature under one aspect constitutes science, our 
consciousness of it under another constitutes religion/' 
We are ever living in the presence of an Infinite and 
Eternal Energy from which all things proceed. Science 
and Philosophy search, not only for immediate or final, 
but for ultimate or First Cause, whence all other causes 
proceed. 

Science and religion are not foes but allies and should 
work together for a common end. Science is the orderly 
arrangement of truth. It consists in tracing facts back 
to their original principles, which in turn the facts illus- 
trate and illumine. All science is one, and is unity in 
diversity. 

Religion is the acceptance of moral obligation. It is 
moral and spiritual truth actualized ; that is to say, it is 
the heart or will-acceptance of truth as the intellect com- 
prehends, and as conscience enforces it. Both science 
and religion mean "looking through nature up to na- 
ture's God." 

Creation is more than science, it is more than discov- 
ery, it is more than manufacture. The old idea was 
that when God created the universe, he made it out of 
nothing; but this is naturally impossible and incon- 
ceivable. From nothing nothing comes. Just what the 



86 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



stuff was that God put into the universe and then breathed 
into it the spirit of life, we do not certainly know, but it 
must have been a pre-existent something; and what is 
more reasonable than to suppose that it was something 
of God's pre-existent Self that He wTought into nature, 
and breathed into that something the living spirit of law, 
light and progress. This does not mean self-creation, 
nor is it making God and nature identical, which 
would be Pantheism. To put something of Him- 
self into the universe and its operations would de- 
duct nothing from God's Infinity or Personality; 
for what is infinite cannot be made finite. Nor would 
it diminish His personal freedom in establishing such 
laws and operations as should, in the end, secure 
"the highest good of being." Till a better theory is 
found, I accept this as the probable theory of Creation. 
If it be not true, then, either the universe must have been 
created out of nothing, which is inconceivable, or else, if 
matter existed independent of God, then how is God un- 
conditioned and absolute? 

We see analogous operations going on constantly. 
One thing, in whole or in part, goes into another and 
becomes a new form of life, as when a plant receives 
from the earth and the air those elements that it takes 
into its own life. What is one substance to-day may be 
entirely another to-morrow. The law of the conserva- 
tion or correlation of forces, affords a good illustration. 
Nothing is lost and much is gained. 

Creation, then, is the organization of the universe and 
all that appertains to it, including living principles, into 
that form of life and operation which we find existent. 
Creation means life and growth through the operation of 
living principles that proceed from God, and that act 



CREATION BY EVOLUTION. 



87 



as intermediate causes in producing what we call nature, 
physical, intellectual and moral. This is creation. The 
science of Creation, then, is a comprehension of the laws 
and living principles by means of which what we call cre- 
ation and its operations are produced. In proportion as 
these are discovered, understood, classified and explained, 
the science of Creation is mastered. 

We have seen that the principle of causality pervades 
the universe and controls its movements. The question 
now arises : Is there any discoverable system of opera- 
tion according to which the world progresses from lower 
to higher stages of development? Until recently, scien- 
tists have discovered no such system. The publication 
by Mr. Darwin, in 1859, of his great work on the "Origin 
of Species/' is thought to contain, and by most of the 
scientific men of the world is believed to contain, the 
statement of a theory that explains the method and 
progress of creation throughout the world and the uni- 
verse; and which is now everywhere known as the 
"Darwinian Theory of Evolution. " This theory, when 
first announced, was strongly opposed by one class, and 
eagerly embraced by another. But now, at the end of 
forty years, it has gained such general assent among 
thinking people, and is deemed to be so important, that 
it takes rank with the greatest discoveries of all time. 

The theory, as Darwin first gave it, unifies all life of 
which God is the centre and the soul. Life in every form 
and of every kind is in some true sense one universal, 
infinite life. 

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul/' 

Darwinianism explains the origin of species to be 



88 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



the result of strength as against weakness. The 
stronger plants crowd out the weaker, the stronger 
animals, aided by hard conditions of life, destroy 
the weaker ones, so that, as a rule, only the strong 
survive to reproduce their kinds, which naturally 
improve because of an improved and constantly im- 
proving parentage. This harmless-looking statement 
is revolutionary, because it overthrows the traditional 
belief that species are not developed or evolved one from 
another, the higher from the lower, but are each an in- 
dependent creation from the direct hand of God. Darwin 
shows that time, environment and struggle for existence 
produce new varieties ; and, that these variations in time 
grow into species which are only greater varieties. And 
he claims that, in this way, beginning with the first 
germs of life, an evolutionary movement has produced 
all of life that we find in this world, if not in the universe. 
And he holds that the same law of progress, ever upward, 
is to go on until the world and all in it shall have reached 
a stage of development as much higher than the present 
as the present is beyond what existed at the dawn of 
creation. The creative work of God is still going for- 
ward as actually and rapidly as ever, and will not cease 
while time endures. The method of creation and prog- 
ress is uniform ; so that when we find how advance is 
reached in one direction we know how it is secured in 
every other. The analogies of nature reveal a law of 
uniformity in every department of creative and progress- 
ive operation. Evolution is God's method of creation. 

After much thought, I find myself obliged to accept 
Evolution as being God's central law of creation and 
progress throughout the boundless field of nature. This 
conclusion has not been reached without some feeling 



CREATION BY EVOLUTION. 



8 9 



of hesitation, and even of awe ; because I see that it 
means reconstruction on a broader scale than many evo- 
lutionists even appear to comprehend ; or, than can be 
entered upon in a work like this. 

The system of evolution as Mr. Darwin left it is open 
to at least two serious criticisms. 

The first relates, not to the principle of evolution itself, 
but to the misleading formulas that were adopted for its 
explanation. 

The term that Mr. Darwin invented as explanatory 
of the method of Evolution was "Natural Selection. " 
But this term, instead of explaining, was so general that 
it needed itself to be explained. It was misunderstood, 
and so created distrust and alarm. The followers of Mr. 
Darw r in saw this ; and very soon Herbert Spencer and 
others substituted, or, rather, supplemented another term, 
called the "Survival of the Fittest," as explanatory of 
Natural Selection. This newer formula has come to be 
the watchword, the "open sesame" of the evolutionary 
hypothesis. It is more definite than was the first. But 
it appeared to make the central law of Creation and 
Progress one of heartlessness. Whatever its authors 
may have intended, the words themselves seem to in- 
dorse the principle that "might makes right." The strong 
destroy the weak because they are weak, and they do 
this for their own advantage. The weak have no rights 
that the strong are bound to respect. 

Beyond question, there is a vast deal of truth involved 
in the term "Survival of the Fittest," but taken literally, 
and as applied to moral beings, it is not all true. Selfish- 
ness, or anything that approaches it, is not the central 
law of God's Universe. There is an altruistic element 
in nature that is everywhere revealed. The mother bird 



90 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

protects and defends her young. Animals defend their 
own species against attack. Let, for example, a common 
crow be disabled or entrapped, and it lifts instantly the 
cry of distress. Other birds of its kind, near at hand 
take up and extend the cry; and, in a few moments, 
every crow for miles around is at the scene, expressing 
sympathy, screaming terror, and, by bold, brave acts, 
seeking to protect and defend its unfortunate comrade. 
This is one example out of thousands disproving the 
implication that nature is heartless. Ask the patriot, the 
philanthropist and the Christian if the law of kindness 
for the weak and helpless is not engraved by the hand of 
God on his own heart ; ask the mother if she loves and 
protects her own children, and the answer is always and 
everywhere the same. 

I am sure that Darwin and Spencer never intended, 
nor would accept the selfish interpretation that has been 
put upon their theory of Evolution by writers, of whom 
Mr. Benjamin Kidd, in his now famous book on "Social 
Evolution," is an example. Professor Drummond, in 
his work on the "Ascent of Man," devoted one of his 
most brilliant chapters to a review of Mr. Kidd's posi- 
tion, showing conclusively that his interpretation of the 
Darwinian formula, if correct as an interpretation, was 
yet false as to facts. 

It would seem that any formula naturally open to the 
selfish interpretation must be misleading and faulty; and 
that it must be possible to substitute for the term, "Sur- 
vival of the Fittest," some other formula that should 
retain all that is good and true in the Darwinian explana- 
tion, and yet relieve it of the bad interpretation which 
has been so extensively fastened upon it. The term, 
Struggle with Environment, is suggested as not only 



CREATION BY EVOLUTION. 



91 



more expressive of the exact facts in the case, while it 
equally supports the hypothesis of Evolution, and is not 
open to the objections that beset the other formulas. It 
is more simple and less likely to be misunderstood. It 
expresses exactly what always and everywhere takes 
place in. connection with evolutionary movement ; and it 
is the necessary condition of all real progress throughout 
the universe. The stellar worlds and their solar systems 
were brought into being by means of unconscious, but ' 
awful struggle with environment ; every spire of grass, 
every plant, tree, leaf, blossom and fruit is evolved from 
lower to higher forms through struggle with environ- 
ment ; and without that struggle there is no progress. All 
animal life, where there is any real advancement, is subject 
to the condition of struggle with environment. The same 
necessity applies to men. In climates and countries where 
there is no struggle there is no growth. Every child, in 
getting an education, every parent in the home, every 
teacher, every business man, every one in honorable 
position, every community, every nation and the whole 
world must and does, as the condition of progress up- 
ward, struggle with environment. Real evolution can 
be attained in no other way. Indeed, God Himself ap- 
pears to create, control and develop the universe by 
struggling with environment. Why not, then, substitute 
this simple term, easily understood, everywhere ap- 
plicable, and which is not open to the objections that lie 
against the other formulas, because the struggle with 
environment may be an altruistic or an antagonistic 
struggle, and is as likely to be one as the other. 

My criticism does not question the correctness of the 
Darwinian principle. It relates only to the formulas of 
explanation ; it discovers spots on the disk of the sun, 



92 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



but which do not visibly diminish its splendor. I can 
almost accept the statement of the President of Johns 
Hopkins University, "That the greatest achievement of 
the last half century is the establishment of the Evolu- 
tionary hypothesis of creation and progress." And yet 
I do not believe that the Darwinian Theory, as now held, 
is a finality on this subject, in the sense that it reveals 
the w T hole truth, so that there are no other great facts to 
be discovered that will modify the system. Its greatest 
fault is, that, while it exalts law and order, it does not, 
with sufficient clearness, enthrone God over all as the 
one motive power of the universe. 

And just this is my second and serious point of criti- 
cism. As first expounded, the theory appeared to leave 
God in the background, and almost out of sight. It did 
not deny His personality, but found no conspicuous place 
for Him. If such a view were a part of the system or 
necessary to it the objection would be fatal. But it is 
not. God is the one Power back of evolution, who 
originated it and is immanent in every movement. Evo- 
lution is simply God's chosen mode of operation. Should 
He withdraw from it His superintendence and power the 
universe would be hopelessly wrecked. This view of 
God back of all and over all is being brought out clearly 
by later evolutionary writers, of whom Prof. John Fiske. 
in his recent book, entitled "Through Nature Up to God," 
is a shining example. Science and religion are now 
joining hands in the recognition of God as the moving 
force in the universe, as never before. Let the bans,, 
between religion and science, between God and nature, 
be everywhere proclaimed and honored. 

We come now to consider the bearing of this central 
law of evolution, of progress of development, upon the 



CREATION BY EVOLUTION. 



93 



problem of Final Destiny. If it shall appear that all 
nature, including the solid earth and man upon it, is now 
in an inchoate state, that the evolutionary processes of 
creation are still going on, and that a consummation is 
likely to be reached that shall include, among other 
things, the purity and happiness of the human race, then 
the bearing of creation by evolution, on the Problem of 
Destiny, would be obvious. 

What is now our earth was once a vast cloud of mist ; 
then it became a globe of fire, then of water, and, in the 
progress of aeons, dry land appeared ; after that plants, 
then animals, all of low order, began to live on the sur- 
face, and, last and latest of all, man appeared. All this 
was brought to pass through evolutionary process, that 
right hand of the Almighty. One movement followed 
another, grew out of another, and each step was an ad- 
vance on the preceding one. Thus, our world was made, 
and probably all other worlds have been formed by sub- 
stantially the same process. One thing is evolved through 
another. 

But world-creations are still incomplete. Nothing has 
yet reached finality. All things are in the melting, mould- 
ing crucible of evolution, and are passing from lower to 
higher forms of existence ; and all the universe appears 
to be moving, slowly moving, toward that final consum- 
mation when perfect and universal order, harmony, sta- 
bility and completeness shall be reached. 

More especially do these statements apply to our own 
earth. Old as it is, it has not yet attained its perfectness 
and final equipoise. What was true in Paul's day is true 
still : "That the whole creation groaneth and travaileth 
together in pain until now." Only yesterday, as it were, 
had the earth attained a condition fitting it to become 



94 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



the abode of man ; and, if man, as is probable, is the chief 
end of the earth's existence, then somewhere in the dis- 
tant future, it is likely to surpass in beauty and harmony 
anything we now see, or can clearly imagine. I must 
believe that a good time is coming when the age of tor- 
nadoes and earthquakes, of pestilences and famines, and 
various sismic and destructive agencies and catastrophes 
will have had their day, and will either cease entirely, or 
become so modified and harmonized as to make in the 
far away time, man's earthly abode, if not his angelic 
home, far and far more beautiful and delightful than any- 
thing he has ever yet seen or, perhaps, conceived. 

But what shall be said of man himself under the opera- 
tion of evolutionary law. If the globe is thus to advance, 
what of man, its lord, for whom the earth exists? Was 
man evoluted from the lower orders of creation by the 
principle of natural selection, or by struggle with en- 
vironment, and has that lower life continued to rise and 
advance until the upright form of man was reached, into 
which God breathed His own spiritual nature, raising 
him above all earthly creatures, allying him to angels, 
and making him the child of God, destined to an immor- 
tal life? Is all this a glorious truth, or is it fiction? For 
myself, I believe it to be true ; and I believe, further, that 
the end of man's progress is not yet attained. He is still 
in the process of evolution and creation. Think of 
the advance that has been made since the dawn of his- 
tory. Think of Christ, who He was, why He came, and 
what through Him men may yet become; think of the 
world's progress during the last century even; think of 
the present activity and energy of men, of their hopes, 
aspirations and possibilities ; think of the openings and 
opportunities with which God is stimulating His children 



CREATION BY EVOLUTION. 



95 



to high endeavor ; think of the great crowd of witnesses 
from the unseen world who are ready to lend a helping 
hand; and think of God's immanence and of the Holy 
Spirit who comes to be man's guide out of darkness into 
marvelous light; think, too, of the exceeding great and 
precious promises, and of the millions who have already 
gone up from this earthly battlefield to their heavenly 
reward, and who beckon those who are yet behind to fol- 
low after and receive the victor's crown ! Let one think 
of all these things and consider what they signify, and 
can he not clearly see that man's highest development 
has not yet been attained and will not be, till he reaches 
that intellectual, moral and spiritual completeness of 
which he is capable, and to which he was destined from 
the beginning, and before the beginning of his ex- 
istence. Man, it is said, was made but a little lower than 
the angels and crowned with honor. Shall God fail, can 
He fail in seeking to bring man to the destiny for which 
he w r as created, for which, too, God has spent countless 
ages in the work of preparation? Impossible. 

I hardly need ask further how does this subject of evo- 
lutionary creation bear upon the great Problem of Final 
Destiny? If the solid globe that has been for aeons of 
aeons a building, — that was built largely for man's sake, 
and, as a suitable theater for the unfolding of his earthly 
existence, and is not yet completed, — is still "marching 
on" towards physical perfection, and will not halt until 
the goal is reached ; if the solid earth, notwithstanding its 
many set-backs and discouragements, is to persevere in 
this way, under God's law of evolution, — is man to fail? 
Is he to be less than the ground he walks on? Will God 
save cold clods and not find some way of saving living 
men, made in His own image and placed on earth in ex- 



9 6 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



actly the position He saw to be best and, on the whole, to 
be best for them? Believe it who can ! 

Then, again, all the other creatures inferior to man, 
mere animals, whose history antedates or runs side by 
side with that of man, are made to reach the highest 
point of development of which they appear to be capable. 
Shall man be the conspicuous exception? Shall his ex- 
istence go out in utter failure, in everlasting darkness? 
Shall this be the portion of at least a large part of the hu- 
man race? Is man less than a beast, and is he reared 
and doomed to an infinitely harder fate? 

I do not forget that man is a free moral agent, but has 
not God a will that is even stronger and broader than 
man's? It is clear that no man can be made holy, and 
so be saved apart from his own choice. He must will 
the right or he cannot be right. But God has a power 
over human wills, as we see in the cases of so many who 
are led away from their sins into the love and service of 
God. And is it not written, "they shall be willing in the 
day of His power ?" 

If this great consummation is not to be reached, then 
why should the human race have been created? Surely 
it was for good and not for evil that God made the earth 
for man, and man to dwell on all the face of the earth, 
and be its possessor and ruler. But, if he is always to be 
what he has been, and is, and especially if the creedal view 
of man and his destiny is the true view, then, should not 
the race as a whole, or in large part, have been left un- 
created? I am sure that the great scientific and evolu- 
tionary movements that have been going on for ages evi- 
dently in the interests of mankind, and under the eye 
and guiding hand of the Almighty, are not to stop short 
of their prophetic and natural accomplishment. This 



CREATION BY EVOLUTION. 



97 



world will yet become the paradise of God and will be in- 
habited by paradisaical people. 

Some astronomers are predicting that, perhaps, a mil- 
lion years hence, the earth may lose its heat and its at- 
mosphere ; but long before then, if there be any truth in 
prediction, Scriptural or scientific, the consummation of 
our race will have been reached, and the earth, as it will 
then exist, may be far better adapted to the beings who 
shall then inhabit it than the earth in its present form 
could be. 

As for the future condition of those who have died and 
are dying in a state of spiritual darkness, I know that 
their misfortunes, their ignorance and their bad environ- 
ment will not be counted against them. Every man will 
have somewhere a fair and reasonable opportunity to be 
saved. It must be so, for God is honorable and just. If 
they do not have it in this world, it must come to them 
in the great hereafter. Existence will not be made an 
infinite curse. If there shall be left any who cannot be 
brought into a state of purity and peace, then the evolu- 
tionary law of disintegration will find them, and they may 
sink down into eternal nothingness. The law of the cor- 
relation of forces does not destroy, for nothing can be de- 
stroyed, but it changes forms of existence. What is 
made can, in the same sense, be unmade. Awful as is 
the thought of annihilation, it is less awful than is that of 
eternal misery. 



9 8 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE BIBLE AS A BOOK IN THE PROBLEM. 

One who has revered and studied the Bible from child- 
hood, and found in it deeper and diviner meanings as the 
years and decades come and go, naturally hesitates when 
called to enter upon even a semi-critical study of its 
sacred pages. But why hesitate? Truth gains and never 
loses by fair and thorough investigation ; and what is not 
true is worse than worthless. 

What is this unique and wonderful Book that we call 
the Bible? It is not so much one book as it is sixty-six 
separate books or writings bound together in a single 
volume ; thirty-nine in the Old Testament and twenty- 
seven in the New. These writings were composed by 
different authors, each in his own characteristic style, and 
extending together over a period of about one thousand 
years. As a rule, each writer wrote independently of the 
others, and delivered his own message for a special pur- 
pose to the people of his own day, and to meet then exist- 
ing needs. We find no clear unity of plan among the 
writers further than that all, or nearly all, of the writings 
are upon religious subjects, and that the law of progress- 
ive thought, as the centuries advance, is clearly dis- 
coverable. In many cases, the date and authorship of 
the books of the Bible are definitely known; in others 
these questions are in doubt, and modern study reveals 
wide differences of opinion in relation to them ; and these 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 



99 



differences relate to some books of the Old Testament 
and to some of the New. 

The Old Testament is chiefly occupied with the re- 
ligious progress, or attempts at such progress, of the 
Hebrew people; and it is written in prose or poetry, all 
in the most natural and human form. The New Testa- 
ment centres around Jesus Christ, the Son of God and 
the Son of Man ; and is every way a great advance on 
the Old. Christ was both the inspiration and the disap- 
pointment of the Jewish people. 

How is such a book to be studied and interpreted? 
Are the well-known and accepted principles of literary 
criticism and interpretation, as applied to other religious 
books, ancient and modern, to be applied here? Or, is 
the Bible to be studied and explained according to a 
wholly different set of principles? Just this is the divid- 
ing line between what is known as the creedal or tradi- 
tional method, and the so-called scientific mode of inter- 
pretation. Both systems agree that the Bible is of in- 
comparable excellence, and of priceless value to the 
world; and, that it is Divinely inspired. But, as to the 
nature and extent of that inspiration, there is difference 
of opinion. 

The traditional view claims that the whole Bible, one 
part equally with another, as originally written, is so 
directly and fully inspired of God, that, on every subject 
upon which it speaks at all, it expresses the absolute, 
changeless and final truth ; and this in such a sense as 
to be inerrant, and to make further progress in that direc- 
tion impossible. Indeed, many go so far as to insist that 
every passage of every book, that every word, letter and 
vowel point was, in the original manuscript, so dictated 
by the Spirit of God that each writer acted simply as an 



IOO THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

amanuensis. Some make exceptions as to certain scien- 
tific statements, not considering that the moment one 
exception is admitted the door is opened for a hundred 
others, and that the whole contention is practically aban- 
doned. On this theory, the only question an interpreter 
has ever to ask is : What do the words of the Bible, as 
dictated by the Holy Spirit, mean? And that meaning, 
when found, is authority on that subject for all time. 
Neither error nor further progress is possible. What is 
written is, on that point, a finality. 

The critical view of inspiration dissents, in part, from 
the traditional view. It affirms Biblical inspiration; but 
claims that the inspiration of the Bible is not in the book 
itself, but in the men who wrote its contents. It claims 
that all men are, in some true sense, an inspiration from 
God ; indeed that all life is such an inspiration. 

"Every bird that sings, 
And every flower that stars the elastic sod 
And every breath the radiant summer brings 
To the pure spirit, is a word of God." 

This view regards man as the highest type of inspira- 
tion; that his moral reason, his conscience, his intuitive 
sense of honor, right and justice, are all Divine inspira- 
tions ; and, within natural limits are absolute authority. 
They are essentially the same in all men ; they never err. 
They are the last court of appeal, at whose bar every 
moral question should come, and from whose decision 
there is no appeal, because it is the voice of God. 

The Bible itself has to be subjected to this test of rea- 
son, of conscience and of moral intuition; and, at that 
bar its inspiration, and the extent of its inspiration, is 
settled. There is, and there can be, no other rational 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 



IOI 



standard. Some men are more highly and broadly in- 
spired than others ; some are inspired for one purpose 
and some for another. Bezaleel, Moses tells us, was in- 
spired to work in brass for the adornment of the taber- 
nacle ; Moses himself was inspired as a lawgiver ; Joshua, 
as a warrior; Elijah and Josiah, as reformers; Isaiah, as 
a spiritual seer; and so on to the end. One is inspired 
for one purpose and another for another, but each from 
God. 

Here, again, the creedal or traditional theory raises the 
question : Are not the writers of the Bible inspired of 
God in a wholly different sense from that in which other 
good men are? They are inspired for a different pur- 
pose, and, generally, in a higher degree; but I do not 
know that it is different in kind. All true inspiration 
is from the Holy Spirit, and all who are thus enlightened, 
are. to that extent inspired. Who shall say that John 
Bunyan's inspiration was not equal to that of the author 
of Ecclesiastes ; or that some of our modern hymns and 
poems are not as truly inspired as is the Song of Solo- 
mon, or as are some of the imprecatory Psalms. The 
book of Esther, although the name of God does not 
appear in it, is yet a beautiful story ; but, so is that of the 
"Bonny Briar Bush and I suppose that the writers of 
both, and of other such books, were more or less under- 
Divine guidance. Every minister in preaching, should 
have something of Divine inspiration. Ought not the 
Spirit of God to abide ever in the hearts of all Christian 
people, and is not this abiding presence inspiration? 

Some, who accept this view in general, add, that there- 
is this difference : The writers of the Bible had inerrant 
inspiration. Did the writers themselves claim that? Do 
their writings claim it? Did the people of their day claim 



102 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

it? No; and, if such a claim were set up, it would not 
bear the test of reason. Passages in some of the im- 
precatory Psalms, the 109th for example, are not inerrant, 
because they contradict the teachings of Christ. Some 
of the Old Testament wars of extermination, which, it is 
said, God commanded — that of Saul against the Amale- 
kites for example — w T ere a violation of right and justice, 
and so, could not have been inerrant. Laws authorizing 
and regulating slavery, polygamy, divorce at will, and 
some other such things, were not according to God's abso- 
lute ideal, or ours. They were only permitted because 
of men's ignorance and the hardness of their hearts, as 
Christ taught in commenting on them. 

The Bible throughout, and especially the Old Testa- 
ment, contains a large human element. Where the gen- 
eral truth was revealed to a writer by the Spirit of God, 
that truth was expressed as the writer understood it, and 
in his own language; and, besides, most of the writers 
were more or less influenced by the ideas and spirit of 
their own times. Probably all were. It could not have 
been otherwise. 

This view of the Bible makes of it a somewhat different 
book from that which the creedal or traditional theory 
claims it to be ; but I am unable to see that it detracts 
anything from its value as a revelation from God, or for 
the purpose for which it was given. It does, indeed, free 
the Bible from many a practical difficulty which the old 
theory fastens upon it; and, also, from the necessity of 
ever trying to explain things that are inexplicable ; and, 
equally, from the necessity of apologizing for God, on 
account of statements attributed to Him which appear 
to be contradictory of both right and reason. Any view 
uhat does this, and does it fairly, brings to thoughtful 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 



^3 



minds a great relief and exalts the Bible. Besides, when 
one's mind is free from such small entanglements, it is 
prepared to see and appreciate what the Bible contains 
and enforces on great subjects. 

The practical value of the Bible does not turn on its 
absolute inerrancy, but upon the great central, living 
truths w r hich it embodies, and brings to the minds and 
hearts of men for their deliverance from sin, and for the 
attainment of eternal life. The crucible in which the 
Bible is to be tested is not its inerrancy, but its saving 
power. The idea that, if the Bible is not inerrant it is 
worthless, is a delusion of the devil for the turning of 
men from its great central truths, and getting them to 
quibble, if not quarrel, over little things, of no value in 
the great problem of Human Destiny. If a city is burn- 
ing, the firemen do not stop to contend about the per- 
fectness of their engines. Let Christians in this sensible 
way take the Bible as God intended, and then, any imper- 
fections it may contain will correct themselves. 

The formation of the Bible, like the creation of the 
world, was by slow process. This is God's method, slow- 
but sure, and one thing at a time. If the Bible, that 
began at the bottom of the human ladder, had gone on 
and up faster than it did, the Hebrews would have been 
left behind where they were at the start. Many of the 
materials that were useful and necessary at the begin- 
ning, naturally became unsuited to the later needs and 
conditions of the world, and so, had to be set aside or 
greatly modified. The New Testament dispensation, as 
Paul argues, and the Book of Hebrews reveals, is 
largely a substitute for much of the Old, and for the 
reasons here suggested. 

Mr. Sabatier, in his Philosophy of Religion, says : 



104 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

"It is against all analogy that the fullness of perfec- 
tion should be met with at the outset of any evolution, 
whatsoever; those who place it at the origin of Chris- 
tianity are victims of the same illusions as the ancients 
who placed the Golden Age at the beginning of human 
history." 

We have now, from the critical side, seen what the 
Bible as a book, is. Another and far greater question 
that henceforth claims attention is : What is the Bible 
for? Till this question is clearly answered, the Book is 
a sealed mystery. When it is answered we see and feel 
its value, and understand that small things in comparison 
with great, are of but small importance. In a word, the 
purpose of the Bible is to promote the spiritual life of the 
world. 

The Bible as to its main purpose is a great light from 
God, let down out of heaven into the darkness of this 
world to illuminate first, the Hebrew people, and then, 
the whole human race. The Bible began with men in 
their low estate; when the beast in them overmastered 
what little of moral culture they had attained; and, as 
God's instrument it has been leading them onward to- 
ward that higher condition of development and blessed- 
ness to which man is destined. It does this along many 
lines, some of which it is now proposed to follow, giving 
sketchy outlines of what, if fully written, would fill a 
volume instead of a few pages. 

i. The Bible, by gradual process, is a revelation of 
God to man. Near the opening of human history, men 
had lost all right knowledge of the true God ; they were 
given over to idolatry; and from this condition they 
had to be reclaimed or their state was hopeless. The 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 



I05 



process must be step by step, and gradual. A rational 
being without God is a moral monstrosity. 

At first, God was revealed to men as a Being of power, 
then, of knowledge, then of judgment and justice, whom 
men were to fear and blindly serve. Next, God is made 
to stand over against idols as the One, living and true 
God. A little later He becomes the special God of the 
Hebrew people, as against the gods of the nations that 
were no gods. When men began to attribute moral char- 
acter to God, they thought of Him as a Being like them- 
selves, selfish, angry, jealous and revengeful. They were 
then unable to appreciate a higher conception. At length 
the justice, the mercy and the goodness of God began to 
come into view. Later on, as seen by a few highly gifted 
or inspired souls, God became a righteous moral Ruler; 
and later still, and especially in the New Testament, God 
is seen as a faithful Father, loving, pitying and caring 
for all His children upon all the earth. This last view of 
God is as different from the first, as a snow-storm is 
different from a harvest, as an acorn differs from an oak. 
It took a thousand years to displace false ideas of God, 
and work the true conception of His character and rela- 
tions into the minds of men ; and it is not fully accom- 
plished yet. This is one of the greatest achievements of 
the Scriptures, and what an almost infinite uplift of hope 
and aspiration it has brought to the world. 

2. The Bible, by slow process, beginning with simplest 
lessons, unfolds to man the perfect law of God. In the 
garden God began to tell Adam and Eve, as children, 
what they might and might not do. Law, in the sense 
of physical order must, it would seem, have been recog- 
nized from the beginning. Man, from the first, had in 
himself the conception of right and wrong, and so of 



106 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



personal obligation; otherwise he would not have been 
man. But these primitive ideas were far short of a per- 
fect system of moral law r , defining the duties which men 
owe to God and to one another. 

The first full and formal attempt we find in the Bible 
to set forth the moral law of God is contained in the Ten 
Commandments. Some of these may have been known 
to men outside of Hebrew limits ; but nowhere had they 
ever been formulated as we find them in the Twentieth 
Chapter of Exodus. What clearness of statement and 
perfect order of arrangement is here ! The code seems 
perfect, as far as it goes. But a glance at that law shows 
that it had not reached the ideal standard. With two or 
three exceptions, each command is given in negative and 
not in positive form. It forbids, but does not enjoin ; and 
the people understood that law as referring only to cer- 
tain outward acts which they must not do. Good as the 
Ten Commandments are, they embody but little of the 
spirit of love, and less still of the spirit of brotherhood. 
All through the Old Testament the duties which they 
enjoin are variously expressed and enforced. Christ, in 
His comments on them greatly broadened their mean- 
ing. He brought out their positive side, and their rela- 
tions to the thoughts, purposes and hearts of men. The 
whole law of ethical righteousness was revealed by Christ 
as it never had been before. But not till Christ pro- 
claimed, and the Apostles illustrated the New Com- 
mandment of supreme love to God and the love of one's 
neighbor as one's self, was the law of God fully under- 
stood. Love is the sum of all God's commandments; 
it is the fulfilling of the law. God is love; and he that 
loveth is born of God and knoweth God. This revelation 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 



107 



of the Law of God makes the Bible the Book of all 
Books. 

3. The Bible unfolds to man the nature, necessity and 
worth of true religion. Apart from the Bible, men are 
religious, for it is their nature to be so ; but the highest 
conception of religion springs from the Word of God. 
True religion means loving service of God and man. It 
means purity of heart and life. It means glad sacrifice 
of one's self for the love of God and the good of others. 
This idea of sacrifice runs all through the Old Testament, 
and finds its glorious consummation in the sacrifice that 
Christ made of Himself on the Cross for the saving of 
the world. This is the Bible conception of true religion ; 
and it stands over against idolatry, formalism, dogmatic 
belief and perfunctory service. True religion is the wor- 
ship of God in spirit and in truth. It is a service of love. 
This high Biblical conception of religion is found no- 
where, as a theory or as a privilege and duty, outside of 
the Christian Scriptures. Here, and nowhere else man 
becomes one with God, in thought and purpose, be- 
comes the temple in which God dwells; becomes a co- 
worker with God for the saving of a lost world. It is this 
religion that allies man to all that is good in the universe, 
and separates him from all that is evil. This is man's 
highest good, and, when we consider that this great boon 
comes to the world through the Bible and not otherwise, 
how shall we find words to express our appreciation of 
God's great gift, and our thankfulness for its bestow- 
ment? 

4. The Bible is God's revealer of man to himself. At 
best, man is the greatest of mysteries and of contradic- 
tions. Take away the knowledge which the Bible im- 
parts concerning him, and the mystery deepens into blank 



108 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

darkness. He knows not his own origin, his nature or 
his destiny. The Bible is a faithful mirror, in which every 
man finds a true reflection of himself. He there learns 
that he was created in the image of God; that he was 
made but little lower than the angels and crowned with 
glory and honor. 

But he learns there also, of his sad fall and of his moral 
separation from God. He finds there an explanation of 
the fact of which he is so conscious, that his spiritual 
nature is in subjection to his animal instincts and pas- 
sions, and that he has entered upon a road that leads to 
death. He is a conscious transgressor of the law of God 
as revealed in Scripture, and re-enforced by his own con- 
science ; and that, left to himself, there is no reasonable 
hope of recovery, and still less of ever attaining to that 
moral and spiritual blessedness for which he often longs, 
and knows that he was created. He realizes that if the 
spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. He is self condemned, 
and knows that it is only by repentance and return to 
God that he can be saved. But the Bible does not leave 
man in this wretched condition. God's ear is ever atten- 
tive ; He hears the soul's first cry for help ; and He takes 
him up from the horrible pit and the miry clay, places 
his feet on the rock and establishes his goings and puts 
a new song into his mouth, a song of hope, and joy., of 
praise; of deliverance and of eternal victory. A Book 
which reveals man to himself, saves him from himself, 
and leads him heavenward is of inestimable value. 

5. The great achievement of the Christian Scriptures is 
the revelation to the world of Jesus Christ, its Lord and 
Saviour, who stands midway between God and man, 
reconciling, not God to man, but man to God. Apart 
from Jesus Christ — revealed prophetically or in person — 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. IO9 

God has never been known, except as a consuming fire, 
an object of dread. But seen in the light that emanates 
from Christ, God becomes truth, light, life and love. 
The very people who depreciate the Divine side of 
Christ's nature owe to Him the bright conceptions which 
they so much cherish of the loving Fatherhood of God. 
No such conceptions were ever reached by men except 
in the revelation made to the world through Jesus, the 
Christ of God. 

The first Biblical hint of the coming Messiah was given 
at the garden gate, in these words : "The seed of the 
woman shall bruise the serpent's head." From that time 
on, all through the Old Testament, we have repeated 
intimations of His coming, descriptions of His character, 
and outline sketches of what He was to accomplish ; so 
that when the Old Testament was completed, a state of 
general expectancy in all the Jewish nation, and, to some 
extent, among Gentile peoples, prevailed. 

At length the world was so far prepared that Christ 
came, preaching that the Kingdom of Heaven was at 
hand. This was the central and the greatest fact in 
human history ; for it measured this world and the world 
beyond. If the "testimony of Jesus was the spirit of 
prophecy" in the Old dispensation, so, the life, the words 
and the inspiration of Jesus was the soul of the New. 
The whole Bible is Christo-centric. Take Christ out of 
it, or belittle His place in the great scheme of human 
redemption, and you have turned the sun into darkness 
and draped the world in hopeless mourning. Christ is 
the light and life of the world ; but this is not the place 
for enlargement on so great a theme. I only add that, 
while great truths are voiced in nature, we are wholly in- 



IIO THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

debted to the Christian Scriptures for our knowledge of 
Christ and His saving mission to a lost world. 

6. While it would not be right to attribute the whole of 
what is called Christian Civilization and progress to the 
Bible, still, it must be claimed that only where the Bible 
has prepared the way, has any high state of civilization 
and progress been attained. A glance at the world, as it 
now is, proves this. The civilizations of Greece and 
Rome are no exceptions, since they embraced only 
a few conspicuous persons, while the great masses 
of the people were in utter ignorance and misery. 
In the best days of Rome, more than half the popu- 
lation were slaves. Wherever the Bible is known and 
read, civilization follows in its train. Human gov- 
ernments and the general condition of the peoples 
are improved; schools, high and low, are established; 
eleemosynary institutions of all sorts for the relief 
of the unfortunate are built and sustained; great in- 
ventions, as the printing press, the telegraph, steam 
and electro-motors, and numberless other inventions and 
improvements follow. I concede that the Bible does not 
do all these things directly, but it is the underlying power 
that produces them, and they only exist where the Bible 
prepares the way. 

Think of what would be on earth, had the Holy Book 
never been written. Then, such agencies as the above 
would never have existed, and the world would be to-day, 
so far as man can see, in pagan darkness. The Christian 
Church is entirely a product of the Bible. With all her 
faults, she has been for nearly two thousand years the 
centre and medium of spiritual power in the world ; and, 
under modified and improved conditions, she will in- 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 



Ill 



crease her influence until all mankind, accepting her 
truth, will fall into her loving embrace. 

7. If the Holy Bible were put in comparison with the 
sacred books of other historic religions, it would so far 
eclipse them all, that their light in comparison, would 
be as darkness. Even the enemies of religion acknowl- 
edge its wonderful power. Rousseau said of the Bible : 
"Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and so sub- 
lime, should be merely the work of man?" Diderot, 
speaking of the Bible to his infidel associates, said of it : 
"But it is wonderful, gentlemen, it is wonderful ! I know 
of no man in France who can write and speak with such 
ability/' The Bible is the admiration and inspiration of 
our greatest authors. Walter Scott said of it: "There 
is no other Book." Milton and Shakespeare drew their 
deepest inspirations from it. Statesmen and jurists follow 
in the main its guiding principles ; and all men, at death, 
pillow their aching heads on its precious promises. No 
books, sacred or profane, for depth of thought, for sim- 
plicity, and yet sublimity of diction, for weight of mean- 
ing, and for fitness to guide, comfort, reprove, bless and 
save a needy world bear any comparison with the Holy 
Bible. It stands alone and unapproachable. 

8. And, finally, the Bible inaugurates the New dispen- 
sation of the Holy Spirit. This is its last, and perhaps 
its greatest achievement. Christ said to His disciples : 
"It is expedient for you that I go away, and if I go away, 
I will send the Comforter unto you and He shall lead 
you into all truth. He shall take the things of mine and 
show them unto you." Our Lord leaves the impression, 
and means to do so, that it was better for the world that 
He Himself should go out of it, and that the Holy Spirit 
coming in His place should instruct, inspire, lead on and 



112 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

sanctify inquiring, trusting souls, and do for them more 
than all the Prophets had done, or than He Himself 
could do, apart from the abiding presence of the Spirit 
of God among men. 

This does not mean that, previously, the Holy Spirit 
had not been present in some measure to enlighten and 
inspire those who sought divine guidance ; but it does 
mean that now and henceforth, the Church — and world 
included — was to be under the dispensation of the Holy 
Spirit as it had never been before. This New Dispensa- 
tion was inaugurated, according to promise, in that upper 
room, on the day of Pentecost, as recorded in the 3rd of 
Acts. That outpouring of the Spirit was for all coming 
time ; and what the effect was upon the apostles them- 
selves, and upon the early Church, history reveals. The 
eyes of men were opened, and they saw what they had 
never seen before, and never would have seen but for 
that new power of enlightenment that had come down 
from God out of heaven. 

One of the special ends to be secured by the dispensa- 
tion of the Spirit was to make revelations to men of 
things to come. Jesus Christ had brought Life and Im- 
mortality to light. But in this, as we shall see, He had 
done but little more than re-state, with some additions, 
the current doctrine of the future life that was then held 
by the Jewish people. He did not speak exhaustively 
or finally upon that subject; He left the "gates ajar" so 
that other minds, enlightened by the Holy Spirit might 
enter in and complete the discoveries that He had 
brought partially into view. I cannot regard the closing 
books of Scripture as the end of God's revelations to 
men ; and much less as the whole revealing work of the 
dispensation of the Spirit, which began when Christ left 



THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 



113 



the world, and was to continue till the final consumma- 
tion. Is it too much to believe that there are people in 
the world to-day, guided by the Holy Spirit, w T ho have a 
better knowledge of God, a clearer view T of Jesus Christ, 
a fuller understanding of the Gospel and a more reason- 
able conception of the life after death, than was appre- 
hended by any of the men in the early Christian cen- 
turies? 

No, God's revelations to men through His Spirit have 
not been withdrawn from the world. All our knowledge 
upon these great subjects, and especially upon the great 
hereafter, which Christ just began to unfold, and left 
incomplete, is not to be obtained by a backward look. 
There is much yet to be revealed ; and God's Spirit is 
leading His people on to greater visions of truth than 
have yet been reached. Whether this is called inspira- 
tion or enlightenment it matters not, so long as the fact 
remains and is conceded. 

The time is coming, and, I think, is near at hand, 
when man's connection and intercommunication with the 
unseen world will be fuller, and more recognized and 
trusted than it has been hitherto. Then, I hope it will 
appear, on partly new evidence, that the human race will 
be so far saved as to make existence, to most an infinite 
blessing, and to none an infinite curse. How would such 
a consummation glorify the Scriptures and exalt His 
Name which is above every name. 

I am confident that to this day the dispensation of the 
Holy Spirit is but imperfectly revealed ; and I take com- 
fort and courage in the hope and confidence that the day 
is at hand for which preparation is now going on, not 
for the second coming of Christ in visible form, but for 
some mighty manifestation of the Holy Spirit that shall 



114 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

scatter the clouds of darkness, flood the world with light, 
solve the problem of the coming life and bring the New 
Jerusalem down out of heaven, so that henceforth God's 
Tabernacle shall be with men. The last and greatest 
achievement of the Bible is the bringing in of the Dis- 
pensation of the Holy Spirit under whose guidance and 
inspiration God will lead the world on, and accomplish 
for the human race that which was purposed at the 
beginning, its deliverance and eternal salvation. 



IMMORTAL LIFE. 



US 



CHAPTER VIII. 

IMMORTAL LIFE IN THE PROBLEM. 

The most interesting and precious, yet mysterious 
thing in all the world, is that well known and yet un- 
known something which we call life. Life in every form, 
high and low, is full of fascination, not only to the scien- 
tist, but to the casual observer, and even to the little 
child. Flowers, trees, domestic animals, birds, fishes and 
wild beasts have a charm alike for man and child, all be- 
cause they have life. Take that away and they become 
an offense. 

What is life? This simple question no living man can 
answer. Learned and unlearned people may talk about 
life endlessly, but they cannot tell what it is. The 
lexicographer calls it vitality and other such names ; but 
these are only synonyms of life and not definitions. It is 
said that life is the opposite of death ; then, what is death 
but the opposite of life? All this forms a circle, but not 
a definition. The scientist can, in a sense, dissect life as 
he finds it in flower or animal ; psychologists can describe 
its operations and parts, but they know not what life is. 
The historian may fill hundreds of volumes in telling 
what life has done, but when asked: What is life? he is 
silent. 

All life is correlated. No living thing exists apart by 
itself, but belongs to one "stupendous whole." Life is 
mysterious and undefinable because it is allied to the 



Il6 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

Infinite. Life is an emanation from God. God is in all 
life, and that, in proportion as each living thing is able 
to receive Him. One of the recently discovered Logia, 
as translated by Harnack, of Berlin, reads : "J esus saith, 
wherever they may be, there they are not without God ; 
and just as one is alone in this manner, I am with him. 
Erect the stone and thereby thou wilt find me ; split wood 
and I am there/' This Logium, so far as it has any 
definite meaning, teaches the immanence of God ; that 
He is everywhere and in everything, especially where 
there is life ; and more and more as life becomes intellec- 
tual, moral and spiritual, there God is, and there is real 
life, immortal life. 

Just where life begins or ends, it is not easy to deter- 
mine. If God is essentially Life, and if all things finite 
emanate from Him, then, it would seem that there must 
be something of life in all things, even in what we call 
dead matter, that feeds and sustains life. Some minerals, 
as magnetic iron ore, and certain gems, appear to have 
something in them that answers to what we call life. All 
crystallizations make a near approach to, if they have 
not, life. In the vegetable world there are degrees of 
life. The toadstool fungus that comes up of a night, at 
the foot of a noble oak, has less of life, and life of a lower 
order, than has the tree that overshadows it. There is 
also a connecting link between vegetable and animal life. 
There are plants that capture and digest insect food. 
One form of animal life is much higher than another. 
The life of a horse or a dog is higher than that of a turtle 
or an oyster. 

* .What distinguishes the life of man from all other 
forms of life on earth is, that rational, moral and spiritual 
elements enter into it and make it divine. Man, in his 



IMMORTAL LIFE. 



117 



mental configurement is like God, possessed of reason, 
conscience and free will. He is, therefore, capable of 
taking on moral character like God's. Indeed, moral 
character, good or bad, becomes to such a being a neces- 
sity. 

Ethical and spiritual life— one in kind — are radically 
different from, and are above all other forms of earthly 
life. The distinction between a man and an animal, is one 
of the greatest distinctions in the universe ; it is an infinite 
distinction. It is this distinction that makes us moral 
beings, that constitutes us "sons and daughters of the 
Lord Almighty," that makes Jesus Christ our Brother, 
and God our Father. 

It would seem most natural, then, that this high and 
Divine quality of existence and of life, so different from 
every other, should have a nature, or spiritual body of 
its own, different from, yet residing in, the physical body, 
where also the animal life resides. This view accords 
with both reason and Scripture. Paul says : "There is a 
natural body and there is a spiritual body;" and in his 
great chapter, he goes on to explain the difference be- 
tween the two. Throughout the New Testament we 
have a clear distinction drawn between the soul and the 
spirit, one representing the physical life and the other 
the spiritual existence ; and it always speaks of men and 
treats them as spiritual beings and wholly separate from 
animals. 

If man, as we have seen, has a double nature, then 
each nature must have a matrix suited to its own needs. 
The two lives in man are as different in kind as are 
those of an animal and an angel. The angel has a 
spiritual body ; so will the higher nature of man when it 
becomes angelic ; so has it now in every human being 



Il8 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



awaiting the death of the physical body when it shall 
take its flight. We cannot conceive of a spirit that has 
not form and substantiality, however etherealized ; nor of 
a spirit leaving a human body that has not a correspond- 
ing spiritual body in which it exists, moves and has its 
being. But if the spirit is clothed in a spiritual body, 
when it goes from the physical body at death, it must 
have had that same spiritual body before what is called 
death ensued. What this spiritual body is, or is com- 
posed of, we do not know. It is invisible and intangible, 
except when it chooses, or when power is given it, to 
manifest itself after death, of which we have many ex- 
amples recorded in Scripture. This spiritual body, com- 
posed, perhaps, of electricity mingled with yet rarer ele- 
ments, lives in the physical body somewhat as people 
live in their houses. The body and the spirit part from 
each other at physical death, one going back to the dust 
as it was and the other to God who gave it. The sub- 
stance of which the physical body consists may change 
form, but it can never cease to exist ; and, is it not rational 
to believe that the spirit in man, and which constitutes 
him man, — conscious of itself and of God, — will continue 
not only to exist as a spirit after it leaves the body, which 
was necessary to it at the beginning, but will rise to a 
higher consciousness and life than was possible to it 
while dwelling here in the flesh? Is the spirit of man 
endowed with Immortal Life? 

In this belief I have unfaltering confidence and assur- 
ance, and this for the following among other reasons : 

i. The natural instincts and moral intuitions of the 
human mind give assurance of Immortal Life. 

Natural instincts are common alike to animals and 
men ; and in both they are to be implicitly trusted. They 



IMMORTAL LIFE. 



are not the products of thought and judgment, but 
are the voice of God in the natures of those who 
feel them. When the bee builds its six-sided cell, the 
beaver constructs its dam and house, and birds form their 
nests and breed their young in Springtime, and in Au- 
tumn fly from Northern cold to Southern sunshine, they 
act from instinct, or, rather it is God acting in and 
through them. Instinct in animals is the call of nature 
to preserve and perpetuate life, their own and that of 
their kind ; and nature never deceives ; it is a safe guide, 
always to be trusted. 

Men, no less than animals, are creatures of instinct. 
When sudden danger threatens, before one has time for 
thought, instinct impels one instantly to ward off the 
blow. Self-preservation is the first law of nature. But 
man's instinct, unlike that of the lower animals, reaches 
beyond the preservation of physical life. Religion is 
man's highest instinct; and, while many would give all 
they have for their lives, they will yet give up their lives 
for their religion. How many, — martyrs, for example, — 
sacrificing the less for the greater, — have, as Jesus did, 
laid down their lives that they might take them, again. 
Is such an instinct a deception, or, is it God's voice to be 
trusted and followed? God never misleads. 

But man, as he comes from the hand of his Maker, has 
more than instinct, and more than reason ; he is possessed 
of moral intuitions, which, again, are God's voice writ- 
ten yet more distinctly on the tablets of his heart. One 
of these moral intuitions, which is both instinct and in- 
tuition, is the clear apprehension of immortal life as the 
destiny of the human spirit. God has put into every soul 
an intuitive conviction of immortality. Man's fear of 
dying is not the fear of annihilation, — 



120 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



"But the dread of something after death, — 
The undiscovered country from whose bourne 
No traveler returns, puzzles the will, .... 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have. 
Than fly to others that we know not of." 

This instinctive and intuitive conviction of life after 
physical death, is practically universal. The instinct for 
religion is not more universal than is that for immor- 
tality. Go where we may among the peoples of the earth, 
living and dead, and this belief that physical death does 
not end life universally prevails. 

The American Indian expects in the future world to 
find magnificent hunting grounds where he will pursue 
much the same course of life that he had followed here. 
For this reason his bow, pipe, hatchet and other things 
are buried with his body that he may be ready and well 
equipped, to enter upon his new and enlarged field of 
activities. The ancient Egyptians showed clearly their 
belief in life after physical death by embalming their 
dead, and building for them costly tombs which they 
called Eternal Habitations. In mummy sarcophagi re- 
cently opened the soul is painted as a bird ready to take 
flight, singing as it rises : "Hail, O my Father ; I have 
come ! . . . I live and grow ; I wake in peace. " The 
Persians as far back as the fourth century B. C. taught, 
through the Magians, "that some men would revive and 
become immortal with a fine ethereal body, and w r ould 
lead a life of bliss upon the earth forever freed from the 
corrupting influence of evil." The sacred books of India 
are equally clear in their statement of the doctrine of life 
after physical death. Every ancient tribe and nation has 
had, — expressed in different ways, more or less material- 
istic, — a belief that the spirit lives after the body dies. 



IMMORTAL LIFE. 



121 



Modern tribes and nations of all sorts cling to the same 
belief. So universal is this God-inspired conviction that 
the few Materialists and Agnostics who raise doubts with- 
out making denials, are but the needed exceptions that 
prove the rule. This universal belief in Immortal Life 
is not a mere speculative theory, but is one of the great- 
est, if not the greatest, moral lever that moves the world. 
Take this conviction from man and the race sinks into 
brutehood. Religion, in any true sense of the word, is 
banished from the earth. Hope is blighted; high ideals 
are obscured, and the great motives to endeavor and 
struggle towards a nobler life are belittled or destroyed ; 
and there is nothing better for man than to eat and drink, 
for to-morrow he dies. Any view that leads, logically, to 
such results must be false. 

To most minds this argument for immortal life, from 
the voice of natural instinct and moral intuition is con- 
vincing and satisfactory. To reject this evidence is to 
bring an accusation against God, who planted these in- 
stincts and intuitions in every human soul. If they are 
misleading and unsatisfactory, who is responsible, man 
or nature, man or God? Nature plays no tricks, and 
makes no mistakes ; therefore man is immortal. 

2. For those who ask still further evidence, let the 
Logical Argument from Reason be introduced as con- 
firmatory of the moral argument, and we reach the same 
conclusion. 

Wise men in all ages have been reasoning upon this 
subject. They have wanted to know the logical grounds 
on which the great conclusion rests. Socrates reasoned 
himself, or thought he did, into the belief in immor- 
tality. Up to the moment of taking the hemlock he was 
saying to his friends that "conscious existence could 



122 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

not cease to be conscious existence; and that per- 
sonality after death must be essentially what it was 
before. " Plato took up the general argument of Socrates, 
and, in his "Phsedo" carried it further; and some of his 
disciples further still, until, at last, they lost themselves 
in metaphysical speculation. The great argument for 
immortality by Cicero was a re-statement of the Greek 
argument placed on a more practical Roman foundation. 

The Buddhists and Brahmins, who comprise so large 
a proportion of the human family, are forever reasoning 
on the subject of life after death ; and they all come to 
the same conclusion, that physical death does not end 
the soul's conscious existence. The fact that Oriental 
doctrines, on this and kindred subjects, are now being 
extensively proclaimed in the United States and Great 
Britain makes some knowledge of them important. They 
hold that souls inhabiting human bodies pre-existed ; and 
that they go from one body to another, and from one 
moral state to another, until at last they attain to what is 
called "self-recognition," which is supposed to mean in- 
ward purity, after w T hich the soul is absorbed into Nir- 
vana, the God from whom it originated. Thus the historic 
religions uphold the doctrine of continued life after physi- 
cal death ; and try to reason out that conclusion. 

Christian writers have also attached much importance 
to the logical argument ; and as the world grows wiser, 
have improved upon the older methods. The Christian 
argument from Reason, for life after death, may be sum- 
marised in part as follows : 

1. The fact of this universal belief invests it with 
rational probability. 

2. The strong and instinctive desire for immortal life 
is an argument for its existence. Why should God have 



IMMORTAL LIFE. 



123 



put such desires and hopes into the natures of men if 
they are not to be gratified? 

3. Man's intellectual and moral powers are susceptible 
of a far higher development than this life can furnish. 
God must have intended that the human soul should 
reach its highest development; but, for this, life after 
death is a necessity. 

These are some of the logical arguments used to prove 
the fact of Immortal Life. But this whole class of argu- 
ment taken by itself, and apart from instinct and con- 
scious intuition, though corroborative, is not conclusive. 
Men never doubt immortality till they try to prove it as 
an abstract proposition. Its proof is largely in ourselves. 

3. A third proof of Immortal Life is one that can only 
be fully appreciated by those who know God and Jesus 
Christ, whom He hath sent, which, of itself, is eternal life. 
Conscious life in and from God, is conscious Immortal 
Life. Christ said, because I live ye shall live also. I am 
the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in me shall 
never die ; he that liveth and believeth in me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live. I live, said Paul, yet not I 
but Christ that liveth in me, and the life I live in the flesh 
I live by the faith of the Son of God. 

Texts like these, with which the Scriptures abound, 
may seem to one who lives unto himself to be mystical if 
not meaningless ; but to one who has the consciousness 
of God in his own heart and life, so that he is as conscious 
of God as he is of himself and of his fellow men, — to such 
an one Immortal Life is not something to be attained 
hereafter, but is a present reality. This argument from 
conscious union with God, and of spiritual life from and 
in Him, is coming to hold a larger and more command- 
ing place in the thoughts of men than it once held. Those 



124 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

who are in a condition to appreciate it need, and seek for 
themselves, no other proof. Life in Christ is to such Im- 
mortal "Life, so that while God lives they must live also. 
They are not going into eternity some time, for they are 
in eternity now, and can never be otherwise or elsewhere. 

I concede that this kind of proof may not be convincing 
to one who has no personal experience of this Divine 
Life ; but to one who has that experience, further exposi- 
tion is unnecesary ; for, in himself he has evidence that is 
satisfactory and conclusive. The time will come, and it 
is coming, when this kind of evidence will be the most 
convincing of all proof, and it should be so now to all 
men. 

4. The direct Bible evidence, especially of the New 
Testament, in support of Immortal Life is so full and 
clear that all I need do is, not to quote, but to classify 
Scripture teaching. One class of texts describes the con- 
dition of the righteous and the wicked in the future world. 
Another class, of which the 15th of 1st Corinthians is 
an example, treats of the resurrection of all the dead 
and of life afterwards. Another contains warnings and 
encouragements, having reference to the life after physi- 
cal death. Another class puts the two lives, that on earth 
and that beyond in contrast, connecting one with the 
other; and still another class connects man's after life 
with Christ's resurrection from the dead and the soul's 
trust in Him. All these, and other classes of texts imply 
the fact of life after death. Comment upon them, or even 
quotation, is unnecessary, as no one denies that the Scrip- 
tures teach the doctrine of Immortal Life. 

5. One other form of argument for continued life after 
physical death is convincing to a growing class of people. 
It is the argument from what are claimed to be well at- 
tested facts, Do spirits of the dead ever return and mani- 



IMMORTAL LIFE. 



I2 5 



fest themselves unmistakably to living men? Are such 
manifestations clearly attested by the senses, one or all, 
of sight, sound, or touch? One such case, could it be 
established beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt, 
would constitute scientific proof, at least of the fact of 
life after physical death. No extended statement is here 
called for. Let us leave Biblical illustrations, of which 
there are many, out of view, and look only at recent tes- 
timony. Let us concede that much and most of what is 
claimed to be spirit-manifestation is superstition, delu- 
sion, hallucination ; or, worse still, deception and trickery. 
Concede this, and yet facts remain to be accounted for 
that are attested by persons of intelligence, whose char- 
acters are above suspicion, and whose observations have 
been so conducted, and are of such a nature, as to make 
mistake impossible. They only testify to what they them- 
selves know to be true as stated. My contention is that, 
should the same weight of evidence that supports some 
of the facts of spirit-manifestation be brought into any 
court of justice, in a trial that involves capital punish- 
ment, no judge or jury would hesitate to pronounce sen- 
tence on that evidence ; and this, because the case would 
have passed the limits of reasonable doubt. If this be 
conceded, then the conclusion of continued life after 
physical death is judicially established. I believe the 
time is at hand, if it has not already passed, when as much 
as this will be generally conceded ; and such concession, 
I repeat, amounts to scientific proof of continued life 
after death, which is practically the question involved. 

This, then, is the conclusion of the whole preceding 
study. The doctrine of Immortal Life will ever remain 
the settled conviction of mankind, — because man by na- 
ture is so vitally allied to God ; because of his inborn in- 



126 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



structive and intuitive convictions; because reason 
teaches the fact of immortality; because Christian con- 
sciousness asserts it; because the Bible declares it, and 
because it is attested by actual manifestations from the 
unseen world. 

And yet, this central doctrine of Immortal Life is in- 
volved in two complications, the second of which is seri- 
ous. The first of these complications arises out of the 
theory of Conditional Immortality, now held by many 
good and learned men. Its advocates teach that Immor- 
tality is not a natural attribute of the human soul, but is 
the special gift of God, through Jesus Christ. The 
righteous only, whose souls are made alive by the influx 
of the Divine Spirit, are raised from the dead and en- 
dowed, not only with eternal existence, but with eternal 
blessedness. All others of the human race are either 
never raised from the dead, or, if raised (and here there 
is difference of opinion), they soon fall back into uncon- 
sciousness, if not into utter annihilation. This may be 
regarded as eternal punishment, since it deprives the 
wicked of that blessed existence which they might other- 
wise have enjoyed. The theory claims that the terms 
death, eternal death, destruction, destroyed, destroyed 
root and branch, burned up, and other such terms in the 
Scriptures naturally mean annihilation. 

Without replying in detail, I cannot accept that inter- 
pretation, — because there are so many other passages 
that are clearly contradictory of that view; and because 
the death that comes to the wicked and sets them over 
against the righteous is spiritual death and not annihila- 
tion; as, for example, when one is spoken of as being 
dead in trespasses and sins, and of persons being dead 
while they yet live. All the passages that speak to the 



IMMORTAL LIFE. 



127 



death of the wicked more naturally refer to spiritual death 
than to a state of eternal unconsciousness. 

What to my mind is of greatest interest in this discus- 
sion, is the main purpose for which the theory of Condi- 
tional Immortality appears to have been adopted; which 
evidently was and is to escape the conclusion of endless 
punishment. One of the latest books published in de- 
fence of Conditional Immortality is entitled the ' 4 Tri- 
Lemma" ; and places its explanatory title on the three 
lines of a triangle ; one line of which represents 
Eternal Punishment ; another Universal Salvation, and 
the base line Conditional Immortality. Then, as the 
first two are argued down, only the third conclu- 
sion remains, which is defended against both the 
others. This is an ingenious device; but, to my mind, 
no one of the three propositions expresses the whole 
truth ; and, for reasons that will appear later on, I should 
have to reject them all. But, were I compelled to choose 
between endless misery and conditional immortality, I 
should be obliged to do, as others have done, accept the 
latter alternative. The idea of ceasing to exist is fearful 
to contemplate ; but, as compared with the idea of eternal 
misery, inflicted by the direct hand of God, it is a state of 
Paradise. Any sort of alternative is preferable to that. 
But, fortunately, neither of them is necessitated ; nor yet 
is the conclusion of universal salvation, which is only an- 
other device to escape from the doctrine of eternal 
misery. 

We have now reached the second complication that 
entangles the doctrine of Immortal Life. It is this very 
question of Eternal Punishment as an infliction from the 
direct hand of God. A very large portion of Christian 
people throughout the world believe, or think they do, in 



128 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

the awful doctrine of eternal punishment as formulated 
in the Creeds of the Church. The conditions of escape 
from such punishment, as given in the creeds, are such 
as to make it certain that the greater part of the countless 
millions who have lived, and are now living on the earth, 
are doomed to go into a place of eternal misery where 
their existence must be to themselves, not a blessing, but 
an infinite curse. 

Such a belief is horrible to contemplate ; and it shrouds 
God and the universe, not in mystery only, but in blank 
darkness. We can understand, in part, why the death- 
less spirits of men should begin their existence in animal 
bodies w T here they would meet with trial and temptation, 
and have to struggle their way upward into the regions 
of light, liberty and life. All this is favorable to the de- 
velopment of character, which is the chief purpose of 
our earthly life. And such a system accords with God's 
evolutionary method of creation, providence and prog- 
ress. We can see why and how, under such a system, 
great multitudes, after many struggles and failures, might 
never attain to a high state of virtue and blessedness. 
But how the Almighty could create a race of immortal 
beings, knowing in advance that the great proportion of 
them must go into eternal torment, which His own direct 
hand should inflict, is beyond the power of human com- 
prehension ; is something that lies outside the line of ra- 
tional belief ! The fact that man is endowed with the 
power of choice explains nothing, unless it means that 
the freedom of man, within very narrow limits, thwarts 
the Wisdom and Power of God in His efforts to carry 
out His own benevolent purposes, which is an impossible 
belief. Nor does the plea that God has sent His Son into 
the world to save lost men avail as an explanation. So 



IMMORTAL LIFE. 



129 



long as it is contended that none can ever be saved by 
Christ except those who know Him, and, in this life, by 
faith accept Him as their personal Saviour, — because 
such an experience is possible only to a small minority of 
the millions who have lived on the earth. 

No, when God created man in His own image, con- 
ditioning his earthly existence as He did, it was all for 
a benevolent purpose ; and that purpose was not so much 
His own glory, as it was the well-being of mankind, to 
whom He sustained a Fatherly relation. In this creation, 
God made Himself responsible for the consequences that 
should come out of it ; and He obligated Himself to place 
every moral being of the race in a condition, or environ- 
ment more favorable to a successful than to an unsuc- 
cessful issue of existence ; and, indeed, to do for each 
individual all that infinite wisdom, power and love could 
do for each individual's highest happiness. God has 
done, and is doing all this, or, as the alternative, He has 
not made man immortal. 

Just at this point lies the complication in which the 
doctrine of Immortal Life is involved. God has either 
made some degree of eternal well-being for each member 
of the human race practicably possible, and morally cer- 
tain, or else He has not made them immortal. He has 
not created a race like ours to make a large proportion 
of it eternally miserable, but has done it, for an opposite 
end. To vindicate the Almighty, one must hold this con- 
clusion, or else deny that man is immortal ; which, for 
reasons given one cannot deny. God must, and will in 
the end, bring most of mankind into an experience of 
perfect blessedness and, to no part of our race will exist- 
ence become a far greater evil than good. God's benevo- 
lent purpose in man's creation will be surely accom- 



130 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

plished. The beginning clearly predicts the end, and the 
end must fulfil that prediction. 

"What began best can't end worst, 

Nor what God blest once, prove accurst. ,, 



SIN IN THE PROBLEM. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SIN IN THE PROBLEM. 

Almost every great question is complex, many-sided, 
has complications, and must be studied, not by itself 
alone, but in its relations to other questions with which it 
is closely connected. Otherwise the investigation is ex- 
parte, or, it stands on so narrow a basis as to be of but lit- 
tle value. 

The general problem of Final Destiny, is a good ex- 
ample of a many-sided question. It is so intertwined 
with other great subjects that they all have to be studied 
together, each giving its quota of testimony, or no valu- 
able conclusion can be reached. This explains why so 
wide a range of great topics comes into the investigation. 

The question of Sin is one of broad, interlacing rela- 
tions, and should be treated accordingly. Seen by itself 
alone we know that sin exists, that it is universal, and, 
that it is the meanest and most destructive thing in the 
universe. It is not possible to draw a picture of Sin and 
its baneful effects more horrible than the reality, as every 
thoughtful beholder sees it. It is everywhere, in high 
places and low, and in ourselves, doing its deadly work. 
So far there can be no disagreement. But, if Sin is all 
this and more, then we should study it in its relations, 
and discover if possible, its place in the problem of Final 
Destiny. 

(i) What are the relations of Sin to moral law? Sin, 



132 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

according to Scripture, is the transgression of law, and 
where there is no law there is no transgression. The 
moral law is the transcript of God's character, which is 
love ; and love is the fulfilling of the law. Thou shalt love 
God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself. On 
this commandment hangs all the law and the prophets. 
But, before the law of God was engraved upon stone, or 
inscribed in the Bible, it was in-wrought with the moral 
nature of man. If it had not been there first, the written 
law would have been meaningless. The eternal principles 
of right and wrong, of honor and justice, of mercy and of 
love, are moral intuitions. Every human being, as we 
have seen, recognizes them as binding on himself, on 
God, and on all mankind. No authority is above or be- 
yond law. So all writers agree. 

Dr. Alexander says : "God, as a moral Governor, has 
incorporated the elements of His law into our very con- 
stitutions, and that the intuitive perceptions of conscience 
are independent of every doctrine of theology, even the 
greatest." Paul's statement on the same point is con- 
clusive. Rom. ii: 14-15. "For when the Gentiles which 
have not the law (written law) do by nature the things 
contained in the law, these having not the law are a law 
unto themselves ; which show the work of the law written 
in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness and 
their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing 
one another/' The moral law of God is written in the 
Bible, and yet more clearly on the tablets of man's heart 
or moral nature; and Sin consists in transgressing the 
mandates of that law. This is both the Scriptural and 
the rational conception and definition of Sin. 

(2) What are the relations of Sin to what is called 
heredity? The term heredity, as applied to mankind, 



SIN IN THE PROBLEM. 



*33 



means the tendency in children to take on the charac- 
teristics of their parents, or of more remote ancestors. 
This tendency relates not only to physical and mental, 
but often, in some degree, to moral traits also. That such 
a tendency exists and should in some measure be taken 
into account in passing judgment upon character must 
be conceded. 

But, when the doctrine of heredity is carried to the 
extent we find it in the historic Creeds of the Church, 
and especially with what is known as the "Adamic Sys- 
tem/' every reasonable person should not only hesitate, 
but oppose. According to that view the moral character 
of Adam is transmitted to the whole human race, so that 
Sin is a part of man's nature, of his inmost being. It was 
in him ages before he was born, or had a conscious exist- 
ence. Every man sinned in Adam, and for that sin is 
justly condemned to eternal misery. This is the condi- 
tion of the whole human race. Every individual, as God 
made him, and before there was any conscious action on 
his part, or he had any knowledge of good and evil, waa 
a sinner. God adjudged him as such, and calls on him 
to repent of Adam's sin, or of his sin in Adam ; to repent 
for being created a sinner, otherwise he would be sent 
by the God who made him what he is, and what he is 
to repent of, into a hell of eternal torment. I have 
actually met one man, an intelligent Christian minister, 
who said he believed all this nonsense, and that he had 
actually repented of Adam's sin, or of the sin which he. 
himself must have committed in Adam ages before he: 
was born. There may be others like him, but I have not 
met any other. Such a view of hereditary sin and guilt 
as is here described is simply absurd, and, of course, is 
not true; it cannot be thought of as anything but false. 



134 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



except when it is brought forward in support of some 
dogma that cannot otherwise be supported. If sin is 
such a thing as is here described then it is nothing, and 
it is not worth thinking about. But, alas ! it is not that ! 

(3) The relation of sin to intelligence. Intelligence is 
necessary to virtue and to vice. If one does not know 
that a thing if done is wrong, then he is not guilty for 
doing it. If he ought to have known, but did not, then 
his sin consists in being ignorant when he should have 
been informed, and not in doing the best he knew at the 
time. This was Paul's sin when he persecuted the 
Church ; he did not know, but he ought to have known. 
If a child can truly say to his father, when some in- 
jurious act has been done, "I did not know it was wrong," 
that father may regret the act, and reprove the child for 
being ignorant, but he cannot punish that child for the 
act itself and yet be a just parent. What if God should 
call every error in judgment, every mistake, or even 
blunder in finite beings, when they were doing as well 
as they knew, a sin, to be punished as such, where would 
we be? No, God's rule is: "He that knew his Lord's 
will and did it not is to be beaten." We must live up to 
the light God gives us, otherwise we commit sin. Every 
man is accepted according to what he hath and not ac- 
cording to what he hath not." 

(4) Consider next the relation of sin to the human will. 
The will is the pivotal point in moral character. Law 
and knowledge are essential to intelligent choice, but 
actual choice, by which is meant purpose or intention, is 
necessary to moral character good or bad. Choice im- 
plies freedom, or the ability to choose in more directions 
than one ; it implies the power of contrary choice ; other- 
wise choice and necessity are interchangeable terms, and 



SIN IN THE PROBLEM. 



135 



not contraries, as they are in fact. To say with Presi- 
dent Edwards that "a man is free to choose as he chooses, 
but that he has no power or ability to choose otherwise," 
is to concede that what is called choice is only another 
word for necessity. This is not freedom, but a delusion 
practised on one's self as a means of harmonizing oppos- 
ing doctrines. If man has no ability to choose, then he 
has no responsibility for not choosing. That is just the 
conclusion President Edwards wished to avoid. At the 
same time he did not wish to deny the bondage of the 
will, which w T as the common sentiment of the Church 
in his day ; and so he gave the old definition of inability 
a new turn and called, it "moral inability ;" but the ele- 
ment of choice, which necessitates the power of purpos- 
ing in more than one direction, was left out of it. But 
this advance, little as it was, — a simple metaphysical sub- 
tlety, — brought relief and made the Gospel preachable. 
What many ministers began to preach, from that day, 
was that men could and did deliberately choose betw r een 
accepting and rejecting Christ as offered in the Gospel. 

But, the point I make is that all sin consists in choice, 
in intelligent choice, — men choose the wrong when they 
could and should choose the right. No act of necessity, 
no choice that could not have been otherwise than as it 
was, can involve ill desert or moral character. Men 
may deny this in theory, but they never deny it in prac- 
tice. It is not one's outward act at all that determines 
character, but the choice or purpose that lies back of the 
act. If men honestly choose or purpose to do God's will, 
to act benevolently, to carry out the law of love in all 
things, then they are in the way of duty; but, if they 
choose the opposite, or refuse to choose the good, which 
is practically the same thing, then they commit sin, and 



I36 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

sin continually. The attitude of the will in the presence 
of known duty determines character. God respects man's 
freedom ; the will, in one sense, is omnipotent ; it puts on 
man a fearful responsibility, but it is a responsibility 
without which moral character could not exist. 

(5) Let us glance now at the relation sin sustains to 
conscience. Conscience is moral reason ; it is pure rea- 
son exercised upon questions of right and duty. It is 
in all men, great and small. To say that one has no con- 
science is to say that he is incapable of moral distinc- 
tions, and so of accountability. This is true of the animal 
creation that has no moral nature. The proof that every 
man has a conscience is in the fact that every man dis- 
tinguishes between right and wrong; he makes this dis- 
tinction for himself, and he applies the same distinction 
to others. Conscience is the voice of God in the human 
soul ; it is the voice of authority and duty, and it is never 
to be silenced but always to be obeyed. No man ever 
sinned in obeying the clear dictates of conscience, and 
no man ever disregarded that inner sacred voice without 
committing sin; so that one might almost define sin to 
consist in the deliberate disregard of the voice of con- 
science. That is always sinful and nothing else is. Con- 
science is law. 

But, it is said that conscience is often blinded, unin- 
formed and hardened. What then? Is conscience still 
the unerring rule of duty? I reply that man's judgment 
is often mistaken, his intellect is unenlightened, his will 
is perverse ; but conscience, when it speaks at all, speaks 
always for God and right and duty, and is to be trusted. 
One must not mistake prejudice, stubbornness, willful- 
ness, wrong judgment for conscience, as some do, and 
call that following conscience. Any truth can be per- 



SIN IN THE PROBLEM. 



137 



verted. But if one knows what conscience is, and fol- 
lows it in purpose and life, he cannot sin. Every sin is 
a violation of conscience, and every violation of con- 
science is sin. If this be not so, then man has no clear 
standard of duty; and moral foundations are broken up. 

(6) The relation of sin to man's ability, is what? I 
answer that ability, in all cases, is the measure of obli- 
gation. If not, then obligation has no standard of 
measurement, and the world is adrift it know T s not 
whither. When a man in given circumstances does the 
best he can, he may err in judgment, but he does his 
whole duty and commits no sin. Such an one may be 
treated as incompetent, but to treat him as a criminal 
would be cruelty. Sin is wrong intention, and not failure 
through inability. 

(7) Glance at the relation of sin to temptation. Temp- 
tation is an inducement to do wrong, either by omission 
or by commission. Some temptations spring up from 
within ourselves, and some come in upon us from with- 
out. Their name is legion. I cannot even catalogue 
them, they are so many. But every temptation to do 
wrong presupposes an apprehension of what is right, 
from which the temptation would draw us away. Sin, 
then, consists in drifting with the temptation, instead of 
resisting it ; it is floating with the current instead of row- 
ing against it. Is temptation, then, necessarily a great 
evil? No, the reverse. True, if there were no tempta- 
tion there might be no sin ; but it is just as true that there 
would be little if any virtue. This statement helps to 
explain the world in which we live. But may not tempta- 
tion mitigate the turpitude of sin? At times, yes; but, 
if successfully resisted it increases virtue. Temptation 



I38 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

works evil or good to men according as they take it; 
yielding is sin, overcoming is righteousness. 

(8) This view of temptation suggests the relation of 
sin to character, and especially to moral character, which 
term expresses what one is in fact, not what he seems to 
be, or has the reputation for being. Character is good, 
bad, or a commingling of the two. The formation of 
good character is that chiefly for which man exists. 
Character in the circumstances in which man is placed 
is forced to form. The one thing, or, at least the chief 
thing we are all doing in this world, is the making of 
character. Sin destroys moral character. If continued 
till it rules the heart and life, it defeats the end for which 
man was created. It is the foe of all that is good ; it de- 
stroys in man all that is worth saving, — his moral self. 

(9) What, now, is the relation of sin to penalty? We 
have seen, from various points of view, how fearful a 
thing sin is, and how the fact of voluntariness everywhere 
enters into it. It is then full of ill desert, and merits 
punishment, just as righteousness deserves reward. The 
fact of penalty or punishment for sin is conceded ; but, on 
two main points there is difference of view that calls for 
examination. 

The first is as to the main purpose of penalty. To this 
question different answers are given : 

One that punishment is strictly disciplinary, and is 
meant for the sinner's good. The parent's treatment of 
his child is the standard illustration. Why does a good 
and wise father punish a disobedient boy? It is not done 
in wrath, but in love ; not in vengeance for injuries re- 
ceived, but in kindness to the boy ; not that the boy may 
get his deserts, but that he may be suitably reproved, re- 
formed and made a happier and better boy. This is why 



SIN IN THE PROBLEM. 



139 



good fathers punish their children. And, it is insisted 
that God is the wisest and best of Fathers, and that the 
spirit which He has breathed into the hearts of earthly 
parents is a transcript of His own. 

It is insisted further that when human governments in- 
flict punishment, it is, or should be largely for reforma- 
tory ends. All this contains truth, and yet plainly, this 
theory does not cover the whole ground. 

A second theory is that punishment is a satisfaction of 
the intuitive sense of justice that is felt in the heart of 
every moral being, and of God. If a great crime is com- 
mitted men instinctively feel that the criminal ought to be 
punished; justice demands it. This sense of justice ex- 
plains why, when a criminal receives a severe sentence, 
the public experiences a feeling of satisfied relief. It is 
partly the ground also, on which mob violence is some- 
times prosecuted and approved. God, it is said, has the 
same sense of justice, and therefore he attaches penalty to 
laws. This, again, is but a partial explanation. 

Another reason for punishment is, the protection of the 
public. Crime strikes at all public interests ; it tends to 
overthrow government and all the interests it protects, 
and, therefore, should be punished as a means of restraint 
and for public protection. This reason certainly applies 
to human governments that are in danger of overthrow, 
but not so obviously to Divine government that is in no 
such danger. 

I should prefer to say, what will appear later on, that 
the violations of Divine law are punished on the basis of 
natural necessity ; it must be so, otherwise law would not 
be law. 

The relation of sin to penalty presents a second ques- 
tion, more difficult than the first. This question relates 



140 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

not to the reason for punishment, but to its extent. And, 
here again we are in the midst of conflicting theories. 
Sin must be punished, but how far, and according to 
what principles? 

One theory is that the punishment of sin must be as 
great as are the evil consequences that flow from it. Do 
results measure desert? Let us see. One man plans to 
do a great wrong, but through some mistake fails, and no 
harm follows, except to himself. The attempt of Guy 
Fawkes to blow up the British Parliament is an illustra- 
tion. Another commits some heedless blunder, and 
measureless evil follows, — as, when Chicago was burned 
up because a milkmaid, in the evening, allowed the cow 
to kick over her lamp. This rule overlooks the motive, 
the selfishness w T hich was back of the act and is its true 
measure. 

Another theory measures desert by the dignity of the 
Being against whom the sin was committed. Men may 
measure sin and desert that way, but God does not. 
What can God care for that dignity that is affected one 
way or another by the follies and sins of men. He pities, 
blames and punishes them, but, as for His own dignity 
and greatness being endangered or affected, the idea is 
too absurd for a moment's attention. 

Again, it is claimed that sin is an infinite evil, and, 
therefore, it deserves an infinite penalty. If every sin that 
any man commits, — and this is the meaning, — is an in- 
finite evil, how many infinite things of the same sort does 
one sinner do in the course of his life? If the first sin he 
ever committed, if the sin he sinned in Adam was infinite, 
and deserved infinite punishment, then his thousands of 
other sins, each of them infinite, deserve infinite punish- 
ment thousands of times multiplied. The idea is absurd. 



SIN IN THE PROBLEM. 



I 4 I 



And besides, those who support this theory, hold also 
that God permitted sin to come into the world because 
He could, all things considered, turn it to some good ac- 
count. How then is it, and is every act of sin, an infiinite 
evil? 

Apart from all the above theories, I must maintain that 
the true measure of penalty is to be found in the law of 
natural consequences. Divine law has two parts : Pre- 
cept and award. If the precept is obeyed, reward follows 
of itself necessarily. If the precept is violated, the natural 
consequences of violation are as sure to come as effect is 
to follow cause. We all know this to be true in regard to 
the violation of physical law ; and, is it not reasonable to 
suppose that the same rule obtains in regard to moral 
law? God's methods are uniform. The penalty which 
sin deserves, then, is penalty that a violated law of God 
naturally and necessarily inflicts. Whether that penalty 
will be eternal or not will depend upon whether or not the 
violation is eternal. The penalty will endure so long as 
sin continues, and a return to obedience will remove the 
penalty so far as, in the nature of things, it can be re- 
moved. But this question of natural consequences is so 
great, and so vital to the problem of Final Destiny, that I 
only refer to it here and reserve its full study for a chap- 
ter by itself later on. 

Two or three other points, before coming to the last, 
require only a word each. Sin brings the sinner into 
wrong relations in every direction. It makes him false to 
himself, to the nature that God has given him, false to the 
law of his being, false to reason, to conscience and to 
every moral obligation, false to God and to the whole 
universe whose just claim he no longer respects. A con- 
dition like this is one of moral discord, and, if that attitude 



142 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

is continued endlessly, it is eternal hell. Nothing but 
true repentance and return to obedience to the moral law 
of God, such as Christ came, if possible to secure, can 
save such an one from a state of eternal death. 

(10) This brings us to the relationship that sin sustains 
to the problem of Final Destiny. We have seen that the 
moral universe, as God has made it, involves in appear- 
ance, if not in reality, a series of necessary evils. It in- 
volves the human race in ignorrance, in mental and 
moral weakness, in inexperience, in conflict and in speedy 
physical death. It does not necessitate sin, but it makes 
its existence in the world not only probable, but a moral 
certainty. God, in creating the race, never could have 
purposed that sin should become on earth, or in the uni- 
verse, finally triumphant. He permitted it to exist for 
some good reason and he will certainly, in some way, 
bring good out of it. It is not difficult to see that sin 
gives an experience to men, in some cases, that proves a 
blessing to them afterwards. Peter was a wiser, more 
stable and a better man for having once, in an unguarded 
hour, denied his Lord. PauPs Christian life burned with 
a holy zeal for Christ which he might never have felt in 
the same degree, had he not once been his persecutor. 
I suppose that nearly every man can turn back to some 
mistake, yes, to some sin in his life, that served in one 
way or another to form a crisis, to induce reflection, re- 
pentance and a great change for the better. What our 
short vision can discover in a few such cases, God may 
see on an infinitely broader scale. He may see what 
Pope describes : 

"All discord, harmony not understood, 
All partial evil, universal good." 

I confidently anticipate that when the universe, or what 



SIX IX THE PROBLEM. 



H3 



we know of it, comes to be better understood it will be 
seen that all its parts, sin and suffering included, are the 
natural though not in all specific cases necessary out- 
working of that underlying and resistless law of evolution, 
by means of which all things that have been, are, or are to 
be, come to exist. What now seems fragmentary, dis- 
orderly, harmful and evil will be found to have been 
natural, educational, and necessary steps in the vast on- 
ward, upward movement, that shall in the end explain 
and vindicate the ways of God ; and, as one result, bring 
the human race at last into harmony with its Creator, with 
itself, and w T ith the whole moral universe. God's wisdom 
and love are in and through it all. Creation by evolution, 
through struggle with environment, is still progressing 
and will go on until perfection is attained. 

When God looks upon mankind darkened by sin and 
ignorance, struggling w T ith temptation and the manifold 
vicissitudes of life, often on the borders, and sometimes 
in the vortex of despair, — when God sees all this, does 
He care, does He simply despise and condemn, does He 
throw off all responsibility and charge all the blame on 
these struggling souls and send them, unconcerned, into 
eternal misery? No, a thousand times, no! "A mother 
may forget her child, but I will not forget thee. As one 
whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort thee." 
God cares for His children, else why has He been so for- 
bearing and why did He send Jesus the Christ, His son, to 
seek and save the lost? 

God saw from the beginning what, and all, that was to 
happen in the history of mankind, and yet He went on 
with the work of creation. Could He have done this and 
yet known that the great proportion of the countless mil- 
lions who should live on the earth through thousands of 



144 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



years would, by His own hand, and by positive physical 
infliction, be made eternally miserable? It cannot be, for 
God is good. 

I know again, that man is a free moral agent, that he is 
endowed with that awful power, the power of choice, and 
that God will never take that power from him, but will- 
hold him responsible for the use of it. Otherwise, man 
could not be a child of God, and in his Father's likeness. 
I know this ; but, I know as well, that God has a will, a 
wisdom and a power infinitely greater and stronger than 
man's. Man's liberty is all within narrow bounds, be- 
yond which he is powerless and cannot go. God's will, 
which is His purpose, has an infinite range, and holds all 
things in its grasp. What He cannot do by direct fiat, 
He can bring about, as we have seen, by indirect and 
moral means. In this way He has gained the hearts and 
control of many ; and, if He can do this for a part, and yet 
respect their freedom, why may He not, in time, do it for 
a large proportion of mankind, if not for all, at least to 
such an extent that their existence shall be to themselves, 
not an infinite curse, but a blessing? With some, the 
blessing of existence, owing to the power of sin, may be 
very small ; it may involve a loss of being and of possibili- 
ties, but it cannot be endless physical torment. Nor can 
it consist in the gnawings of conscience, in regrets and in 
mental anguish, for this implies repentance, at least a 
desire to return to duty, which God, through Jesus 
Christ will recognize, encourage and accept. Only those 
will be left who prefer to be w T hat they are, away from 
God and living to themselves and with those like them- 
selves. 

The relation then, of sin to the problem of Human 
Destiny is this : Sin is the one discordant note in human 



SIN IN THE PROBLEM. 



145 



history. The time will come when that discord shall 
cease and the harmonious song of love and praise shall be 
universal and eternal. This is the solution of the great 
Problem. 



146 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



CHAPTER X. 

CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL IN THE PROBLEM. 

The most glorious personage ever born into this world, 
whose thought and mission are higher, w T hose fame and 
power are greater than those of any other, whose words 
and life are ruling the thinking world and are destined to 
bring the whole race into harmony with His principles 
and spirit of love, — is Jesus, the Christ of God. 

Historically, he was of lowly origin. Literally, "He 
was born in a stable and cradled in a manger." He be- 
longed to a peasant family, was a Nazarene from a mean 
little town among the hills of Galilee. By trade He was 
a carpenter. He could read and, probably, write ; but we 
know not that He ever wrote a line in His life. He was 
familiar with the Scriptures. His public life extended 
only through three or four years, when He was rejected 
by His own people and crucified, while yet He was a 
young man. This is Christ's historic life. 

He had a prophetic history. Christ, the Messiah, was 
the subject of continued Old Testament prophecy from 
Genesis to Malachi. "His name was above every name." 
It was said of Him : "For unto us a child is born, unto 
us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his 
shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Coun- 
sellor, the mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the 
Prince of Peace." His advent was the theme of earnest 
expectation in the Jewish nation ; and a common feeling 



CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 



147 



pervaded the whole world that some great personage and 
deliverer was soon to appear. The Jews looked for a 
Messiah who should come in great glory, and make their 
nation the ruler of all the earth. In this mistaken view 
they did, as many others have done, and are doing, — they 
gave a literal interpretation to prophesies that were in- 
tended to have only a spiritual fulfillment; therefore, 
Christ's advent was a disappointment to His nation. 

What, then, was Christ in reality? We can best learn 
this from His own words. He often speaks of Himself 
as the Son of Man. He was a man, and as man "He was 
tempted in all points like as we are." He grew in stature 
and in wisdom and in favor with God and man, as other 
bright and good children do. He prayed to His Father, 
as other people do, and ever sought His guidance and 
support. He lived by faith. He came to do the will of 
His Father, not His own ; and He said : "My Father is 
greater than I." He possessed and illustrated, in the 
highest degree, every noble human quality. He was a 
perfect man. 

But He was, and claimed to be, more than a man. He 
was the Son of God. All men are in some sense God's 
children, and He their Father because God has imparted 
to man something of His own moral nature, and so 
made him one with Himself, and this, not in a figurative, 
but in a literal sense. Man has a oneness with God that 
the lower orders of creation, destitute of moral nature 
cannot have. But Christ is the Son of God in a higher 
sense than any other human being ever was or can be. 
His spiritual nature was pre-eminently Divine, by reason 
of its Divine fullness. "He was filled with all the fullness 
of God." He was God's representative on earth. The 
spiritual affairs of this world were so committed into His 



I48 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

hands, and He was so able to meet the responsibility, that 
He could properly say of Himself what no one else can 
say. He said : ''Before Abraham was, I am." "I and my 
Father are one. He that hath seen me hath seen the 
Father/' "That the Son of Man hath power on earth to 
forgive sins." He said to men : "I am the way, the truth 
and the life ; I am the door ; I am the vine and ye are the 
branches." And, again : "Come unto me all ye that are 
weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest." "I am 
the resurrection and the life." Many such things Christ 
said of Himself, and they were all re-affirmed by the 
apostles. Such words were spoken naturally, and in no 
spirit of boasting. "My words," He said, "are true." 
Think of any other man applying such language to Him- 
self as Christ was in the constant habit of using. Christ 
then, in His unique personality, stands apart from all 
men, and is so allied to God as to be His representative in 
the work of man's salvation. In Christ alone we see and 
find God. He is God manifested in the flesh. 

If I am asked, what was Christ, theologically defined? 
I prefer to leave that question €where Christ Himself, and 
the New Testament leave it, and where it must ever re- 
main, — a great spiritual fact and mystery, that was never 
intended to be compressed into a theological or meta- 
physical dogma. The Creeds, in trying to do this, have 
confused themselves and the Christian world. Christ's 
mission is not one of theory, but of salvation for man- 
kind by means of the Gospel, of which He Himself is the 
soul and life. Christ and God are one. 

What is this Gospel that it should attempt so much? 
Since many people appear to mistake what is incidental 
to the Gospel, or some of the fruits of the Gospel, for the 



CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 



149 



Gospel itself, it seems necessary, at the outset, to correct 
in a negative way some of these errors. 

The Gospel is not a system of creedal metaphysics. No 
doubt it has a philosophical basis, but it is not a scheme 
of philosophy. For example, the Gospel embodies no 
statement, and much less a solution, of the current doc- 
trine of the Trinity. Whatever of truth there may be in 
the theory of "Three in one and One in three" — and there 
is much — this is purely a matter of human speculation 
and philosophy. It is not the Gospel, nor any essential 
part of it. I believe in a Trinity of God, but limit its for- 
mulation. No theory of the Atonement constitutes the 
Gospel. A whole class of metaphysical conclusions and 
speculations which, in past times, have been preached as 
vital Gospel truths, and as essential to Christian character 
and church standing, are now seen to be, not the Gospel 
nor essential to it. They are schemes of man's devising. 

Ethical teaching, apart from spiritual life, is not the 
Gospel. The great importance of ethical teaching is not 
questioned ; but ethical truth was in the world, and w r as 
extensively taught, long before Christ came. It is the 
rcck-basis of the Gospel, but it is not the Gospel. Christ 
taught ethical truth, but His chief Gospel mission was 
above and beyond that. Ethical teaching is but the step- 
ping-stone to the Gospel. 

Nor is the Gospel a system of sociology or humani- 
tarianism. True, all men are brethren, having God as a 
common Father. The law of kindness between man and 
man should prevail ; the rich should remember the poor : 
the woes of men should be alleviated. The spirit of the 
Gospel leads to all this, as cause leads to effect ; but effect 
is not cause ; nor is humanitarianism the root principle of 



150 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

the Gospel that goes to the heart; that brings man to 
God and purifies the life. 

Christian civilization is not the Gospel, but is one of its 
fruits. The fruit is not the tree, without which there 
would be no fruit. The blessings of civilization are in- 
estimable, and are directly or indirectly the fruits of 
Christ's Gospel ; but the heart and soul of that Gospel is, 
as will soon appear, deeper and richer than all these com- 
bined. 

Having disposed of these inadequate conceptions of 
what the Gospel of Christ is, as revealed in the Scriptures 
and in human experience, I come now to the positive 
side, and repeat the question : — What is the Gospel? 

The Gospel, as the word signifies, is good news ; and 
the name that was given to Christ at, and before His 
birth was Jesus, which means Saviour, and this because, 
"He should save His people from their sins." At the 
time of His birth, an angel announced to the shepherd 
the great news, in these words : "Fear not, for, behold ! 
I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all 
people ; for unto you is born this day in the city of David 
a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And suddenly there 
was with the angel a great multitude of the heavenly 
host, praising God and saying: "Glory to God in the 
highest and on earth peace and good will to men." Then 
the wise men came from afar saying: "Where is the 
young child, for we have seen His star in the east and 
are come to worship Him." Thirty years later, at 
His baptism in the wilderness, "there came a voice from 
heaven saying, 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am 
well pleased/ " 

Surely, then, with all these wonderful attestations, 
Christ Jesus could have been no common personage. He 



CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 



must have come to this world on some great and Divine 
mission. If we would know how great, and just what, 
that wonderful mission was and is, listen to the words of 
Christ Himself, where, in the third chapter of John's 
Gospel, He announces the sublime purpose of His 
coming and of His Gospel. 

"As Moses lifted up the serpant in the wilderness, even 
so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whosoever be- 
lieveth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. 
For God so loved the world that He gave His only be- 
gotten Son that w T hosoever believeth should not perish, 
but have everlasting life. God sent not His Son into the 
world to condemn the world, but that the world through 
Him might be saved/' 

Three times Christ repeats the sublime purpose for 
which He had come into the world. In another place He 
repeats the same thought : "And I, if I be lifted up, will 
draw all men unto me." The apostles take up the refrain 
after the crucifixion. Hear Paul to Timothy : "It is a 
faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ 
Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I 
am chief." 

Then, again, how full and free are the invitations of the 
Gospel. Listen to Isaiah, in anticipation of Christ's day : 
"Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and 
he that hath no money ; come ye, buy and eat, yea, come, 
buy wine and milk, without money and without price." 
Hear Christ saying: "Come unto me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Learn of 
me and ye shall find rest unto your souls." In the last 
chapter of the Bible, we read, "And the Spirit and the 
Bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say, Come; 



152 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

and let him that is athirst come ; and whosoever will, let 
him take the water of life freely." 

Observe with what holy enthusiasm, hope, confidence 
and love all the apostles speak of Christ and of the Gospel 
which He brought into the world for the saving of men ; 
and then, if we note, in addition, the power which the 
Gospel, from that day till now, has exerted over the lives 
and hearts of all who truly accept it, we must see that the 
coming of Christ and His Gospel into this world was, 
indeed, good news and glad tidings of great joy unto all 
people. 

Why is the Gospel all this? The simple statement of it 
is the greatest announcement ever made to man, but 
there must be some reason, some facts back of the words 
themselves, that make them so great. What are those 
underlying facts? 

The Gospel of Christ is good news and glad tidings of 
great joy, unto all people : 

1. Because Christ through it reveals to man the heart 
of God. It is said that "God out of Christ is a consuming 
fire" ; by which is meant that God, apart from Christ, is 
more feared than loved; that the severity of His nature 
overshadows His Fatherhood and His love ; that God is 
a King and Judge, more than He is a sympathizing and 
merciful Saviour. This was the prevailing view of God 
throughout the ages prior to the coming of Christ ; and 
the Jewish people, as a whole, were no exception. This 
is the view, substantially, that men throughout all the 
earth take of God to-day, except as they are enlightened 
by the Gospel of Christ. There is no other view to be 
consistently taken, if Christ, as the impersonation and 
representative of God, is lost sight of or denied ; and this 
explains why the old view yet so extensively prevails. 



CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 



153 



Men are trying to know God out of Christ, and they find 
in Him only a stern Judge and King. We have one class 
of intelligent people who talk continually of the love and 
Fatherhood of God, while yet they regard Christ as only 
the greatest of men. Where did their conception of God 
come from, except from Christ? Why then, do they 
feather arrows with which to attack Christ's Divinity 
with pluckings from that very Gospel which alone brings 
them into an apprehension of God as a merciful and 
loving Father? 

A new conception of God is just dawning upon the 
world, because Christ and His teachings on this great 
subject are beginning to be understood. The theory of 
Kingship is melting into Fatherhood ; and this is the 
open door to a new and glorious era of Human Destiny, 
It supplants much of the old theology and makes all 
things new;— God, man, theology and Human Destiny 
are comparatively new. For a time, these new concep- 
tions of God and His Gospel disturb current thought and 
awaken alarm; but there is a divine life and power in 
them that will yet revolutionize and uplift the world. 

2. The Gospel of Christ is good news, because Christ, 
through it, "takes men out of the horrible pit of miry 
clay into which they are fallen, and places their feet upon 
a rock and establishes their goings, and puts a new song 
into their mouths, of praise to God." Explain the fact 
as we may, the human race, except as enlightened and 
uplifted by the Gospel of Christ, is in spiritual darkness. 
Selfishness, and therefore death, hold dominion. This 
is almost equally true in the higher and in the lower 
walks of life. Gilded selfishness, on the one hand, and 
debauched selfishness on the other, is the chief distinc- 



154 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

tion. The disease and its diagnosis are the same; only 
outward circumstances differ. 

From this miserable condition men must be freed or 
they cannot see God and attain to what is worthy of 
being called eternal life. Can men free themselves? Can 
ethical teaching free them? Can any self-centering relig- 
ious services and outward forms satisfy an awakened con- 
science? Can anything short of the Gospel of Christ 
bring rational and lasting peace to a lost world? To all 
these and such like questions human history and personal 
experience answer, no ; Christ only is mighty to save. 

How does Christ save sinful and lost souls? I answer, 
by laying hold of every outstretched hand and helping its 
possessor across the dark, deep chasm that lies between 
it and God. That chasm is selfishness. All men feel the 
bondage and the degradation of the pit, but their strength 
is weakness. God only can deliver. To illustrate : Some 
years ago, an explorer and his crew, in their search for 
the north pole, were wrecked in the polar sea. They 
reached a frost-bound shore. Cold, hunger and discour- 
agement had thinned their ranks, so that the few who 
remained were just alive. They had no hope in them- 
selves. One day, peering seaward, they spied a ship far 
away. They knew it had come to save the lost. They 
were just able to raise a signal of distress, but would it be 
seen ! After long and anxious waiting, the ship shifted 
sail and headed for the flag of distress. What a moment 
was that to those lost men ! Thousands of such illustra- 
tions might be given and the application is obvious. Men 
are lost. They are restless and want often they know not 
what. They want God. They are on the cold polar 
island of selfishness, starving and dying for spiritual food 



CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 



155 



and life. The signal of distress is raised, the Gospel ship 
approaches, and they are saved. 

This is the mission of Christ and His Gospel to this 
world. Is not His coming "good news" to all who know 
themselves to be lost, and in need of Divine help to save 
them from themselves. 

3. But the mission of Christ through His Gospel is not 
yet accomplished. To help men across the chasm from 
themselves to God is a great thing, but it is only the first 
step. Men must be led ever onward into a higher, 
diviner life. The germination of a seed is not the full 
grown plant or tree in a state of fruitage. Nature's order 
or growth is, "first the blade, then the ear, then the full 
grown corn in the ear." Growth is everywhere the con- 
dition of continued life. When plants, or animals, or 
human beings cease to grow, they begin to die. This is 
pre-eminently true of man's spiritual nature. Here there 
is room for infinite growth; and Christ in His Gospel, 
has made full provision for the soul's need of spiritual 
progress. 

What the Gospel gives to those who follow on to know 
the Lord is life, growing life. "And this is life eternal, to 
know God and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent." That 
knowledge of God which means life, eternal life, is not 
theory, but experience ; it is not something that others 
have told us, but what we know for ourselves ; it is not 
what we have found and read of in books, not even in the 
Bible, but it is the Divine life mingling with our lives. It 
is "God in us the hope of glory." This is no figure of 
speech, but, of all facts, it is the most literal and the most 
living, we are, in a spiritual sense, to become one with 
Christ as He is one with the Father. We are to live and 
move and have our being in Him, even more than we 



I56 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

have in ourselves ; and we are to be as conscious of this 
as we are of ourselves ; so that one who has this life, no 
longer acts from himself but from the promptings of an 
infinite Spirit that dwells in him, enlightening his 
thoughts, regulating his feelings, stimulating his heart, 
directing his will, controlling his actions and exalting 
and ennobling his whole moral being. 

This is what Paul meant when he said : "I live, yet not 
I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life I live in the flesh, I 
live by the faith of the Son of God." It is Christ's life, the 
life of love, and so eternal, as Christ said : "Because I 
live ye shall live also." This experience to those who 
know it, is as real, simple, natural and conscious as are 
any of the common experiences of one's every-day affairs. 
Those who have it in part, understand it in part. But 
those who live unto themselves and from themselves, no 
more understand such words as I have quoted, and others 
like them, than a deaf man understands music, or a blind 
man appreciates colors. Take such a chapter as the sixth 
of John, where Christ says : "Except ye eat of my flesh 
and drink of my blood, ye have no life in you," and, in- 
deed, the entire last half of the chapter ; and, to one who 
has not the experience of an indwelling Christ the whole 
statement is bewildering, not to say revolting. It was 
this to some of Christ's professed disciples, who said : 
"These are hard sayings, who can hear them?" And so 
they turned back as many others have done, and walked 
no more with Him. But, to those who are born into the 
new life words descriptive of it are clear in meaning, and 
sweeter than honey and the honey comb. 

How is this higher Christ-life to be attained and lived? 
It cannot be reached by any legal or self-centering effort. 
One must be born into it of God's spirit. It comes to 



CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 



157 



those who go out from themselves entirely to Christ and 
trust Him alone to guide and govern their thoughts, feel- 
ings and lives. Their one responsibility is to live 
henceforth in the spirit of love, trust and service. Such 
ones have the "witness of the spirit that they are born of 
God/' ''They become dead unto the world and alive 
unto God. Old things have passed away and all things 
have become new." Observe, it is not the Gospel, apart 
from Christ, that does this ; it is no system of truth that 
does it; it is not the Bible, the Old Testament or the 
New, that does it, but Christ Himself, personally acting 
through what we call the Gospel, that does it all. Christ 
then, is the Gospel, so that, to accept Christ is to accept 
the Gospel ; to reject Christ, is to reject the Gospel. The 
Gospel is only a theory without Christ, w T ho alone is its 
soul, life and power. 

In this view of the Gospel, and of Christ its Founder, I 
have tried to avoid points of controversy. We saw at the 
beginning w r ho and what Christ was, that He should un- 
dertake so great a work as that of saving a lost world. 
Christ is the Gospel and more ; He is the revealer of God 
to man. We know God only through Christ. Take 
Christ away, and God, in any true and practical sense as 
we have seen, is unknown and unknowable. "He is past 
finding out" ; and we have to stop where Job stopped, 
when, in the agony of despair, under the inscrutable 
ways of Providence he exclaimed : "O that I knew 
where I might find Him, I would come even to His seat, 
I would order my cause before Him." Poor Job, he 
was where thousands of others have been; but, had he 
known in his heart the Christ of God, as I have tried to 
describe Him, and shall further try, his mind would have 



I58 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

been as quiet, peaceful and trustful as that of the weaned 
child. 

This is the Gospel, and the Christ of the Gospel, who 
"came to take away the sins of the world, and to destroy 
the works of the devil. This is the Christ who tasted 
death for every man, and wills to have all men saved. 
This is the Christ who is "with his people always, even to 
the end of the world," the Christ who dwells in our 
hearts by faith ; the indwelling Christ from whom we "re- 
ceive the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, 
Father/' 

And now, the great question arises : Will Christ's mis- 
sion of salvation to this world be fully accomplished?'' 
Will Christ "yet see of the travail of His soul and be 
satisfied." I lay it down as an indisputable fact that wha£ 
Christ came to do, He will accomplish. 

What did Christ come to do, but to carry out the will 
of the Father and to bring the human race, through dis- 
cipline and suffering, first into submission to God ; and 
finally into such measure of happiness as each soul shall 
be able to receive and enjoy. Such a consummation is 
most reasonable and probable; for, I ask again, why 
should God have made man immortal, if his existence 
were not to bring to him more of good than of evil. The 
answer to our thrilling question turns largely upon the 
word of the Lord. Out of many, I select three passages, 
which seem to me to confirm the view here suggested, 
and commend them and the whole subject to thoughtful 
contemplation: Phil. 2: 10-11: "That at the name of 
Jesus, every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and 
things in earth, and things under the earth (that is in 
Hades), and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus 
Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." 



CHRIST AND HIS GOSPEL. 



159 



Eph. 1:10: "That in the dispensation of the fullness of 
time, He might gather together, in one, all things in 
Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, 
even in Him." 

Col. 1 : 19-20: ''For it pleased the Father that in Him 
should all fullness dwell ; and having made peace through 
the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things 
unto Himself, by Him, I say, whether they be things in 
earth or things in heaven." 

These and other such great sayings are essentially one, 
with variations, and each appears in a different epistle, 
showing that the subject had received thorough consider- 
ation and was deemed to be of special importance. What 
do the passages mean? I cannot see how any unbiassed 
person who has no preformed theory to defend, can fail 
to find in these words of Paul a clear statement in gen- 
eral, of the doctrine of final restitution as the consumma- 
tion of the Gospel of Christ to this world ; at least, to the 
extent that every human being will be so far saved, that 
his existence will be to him a blessing and not an infinite 
curse. But all this is not accomplished in the present 
life, and must therefore, go on after death, in the Inter- 
mediate State, which is to be the subject of the next 
chapter. 



i6o 



THE PROBLEM OF FIXAL DESTIXY. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE IN THE 
PROBLEM. 

The doctrine of a general judgment, to take place at 
the end of the world, has been the common belief of the 
Christian Church. All who accept this doctrine must, 
from logical necessity, accept also the fact of an In- 
termediate State, extending from the point of death to 
the end of the world. One view evidently involves and 
necessitates the other. 

Of late, one class of Christians, perhaps a growing 
class, has put a new construction upon the terms General 
Resurrection and Final Judgment but this view also 
necessitates an Intermediate State ; intermediate between 
death and the time when the mediatorial reign of Christ 
shall end. As this newer view of ressurrection and judg- 
ment will be studied in a chapter by itself, its further no- 
tice will not come into the present study. 

What is here proposed, is a study of the Intermediate 
State as it stands related to the doctrine of a General 
Resurrection and Final Judgment at the end of the world. 
Ecclesiastical historians show that a belief in the fact of 
an Intermediate State has, in some form, been held in the 
church throughout the centuries. Quotations are un- 
necessary. In the Scriptures that state is spoken of, or 
implied, under different names, which will be considered 
in their place. 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. l6l 

Assuming, then, the fact of an Intermediate State, the 
question at once arises : What takes place, or may take 
place in one's spiritual experience between death and the 
final judgment? This question should be studied in the 
light of reason, of conscience, of history and of the in- 
spired Word ; all of which should throw light upon a 
question that does not admit of demonstration, and must 
be settled on the ground of strong, rational probability. 

That the whole subject, at present, lies much in the 
mist, is evident from the differing and conflicting theo- 
ries that are entertained concerning it, as a mere glance 
at some of them reveals. The annihilationist theory, 
founded on conditional immortality, has one way of an- 
swering the question as to what may take place in a soul's 
existence between death and judgment. The doctrine of 
final restoration, which has had its advocates from the 
time of Origen, would necessitate another and different 
answer, as the writings of Meyer, Endicott and other 
later writers show. The figurative or spiritual theory 
of Swedenborg and his followers has a solution of the 
question not less romantic than the theory itself, and 
they quote Scripture almost endlessly in its support. 
The pre-millenarians, who comprise some of the best 
Christians, and ablest thinkers and scholars of the 
Church, anticipate Christ's second coming before what 
is called the millennium, and not after. This view does 
not remove the necessity of an Intermediate State, but 
modifies conceptions of what may take place during its 
continuance. What is known as the orthodox view is 
not so easily stated, because its supporters appear often 
to be either indefinite or inharmonious in their presenta- 
tions. Sometimes one gets the idea that the righteous 
go, immediately after death, into heaven, and the wicked 



l62 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

into hell ; but that when the judgment comes, they are 
brought back from these abodes to be judged ; after which 
they return to the places from whence they came. Others 
represent that both the righteous and wicked are in 
some intermediate place of happiness or of misery until 
the hour of final destiny is reached. But, in any view, 
there is an Intermediate State, in which changes of some 
sort take place ; and at the end of which comes the gen- 
eral resurrection and final judgment; but, just what takes 
place, or may take place in the intermediate period is left 
in obscurity. Still another theory, known as that of the 
"Greater Hope," anticipates that, in some cases at least, 
the offers of mercy, such as are made through Christ to 
men in this life, will be extended, and availed of in the 
intermediate world after death. 

This brief and imperfect classification reveals two 
things: 1st, That the doctrine of the Intermediate State 
intertwines itself with all the theories that men hold on 
the subject of Eschatology, and this, in such a way that, 
to some extent, they have to be studied together. What 
one holds on one branch of the subject determines one^s 
conclusions on every other. 2d. That the conclusions of 
good and wise men on the question of the Intermediate 
State are so indefinite and diverse as to show that the 
whole question is yet in a condition of unsettlement. 
Any new or modified hypothesis, therefore, which seems 
rational, and likely to harmonize discordant views, is 
worthy of serious attention. 

After much reflection, I submit the following as a pos- 
sible and probable solution of the great question as to 
what does, or may take place between the time one leaves 
the body and the termination of the Intermediate State, 
whenever it shall terminate. 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 



I63 



The view is this : That so long as Christ is on the 
mediatorial throne, He will continue to mediate ; that His 
offers of mediation and mercy extend to all for whom 
He came, and died to save, wherever they may be, in this 
world or in the Intermediate State beyond this life. 
What the result of these offers will be I cannot positively 
say; I am only sure that they will continue throughout 
Christ's mediatorial reign. 

The great text on this subject, one to be relied on more 
than upon any other, is in 1 Cor. 15 : 24th, 25th and 28th 
verses : "Then cometh the end when He shall have de- 
livered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when 
He shall have put down all rule and all authority and 
power. For He must rule till He hath put all enemies 
under His feet And when all things shall be sub- 
dued under Him, then shall the Son also, Himself be sub- 
ject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God 
may be all in all." 

This remarkable passage, by the agreement of all com- 
mentators, teaches : 

1. That Jesus Christ is on the mediatorial throne, ad- 
ministering a mediatorial government over men and over 
the spiritual affairs of this world. All things, as regards 
the saving of men, are in His hands. He has set up 
what, in the four Gospels, is nearly a hundred times called 
the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven (show- 
ing that it belongs to both worlds) over which Christ 
reigns as Lord and King. 

2. That this mediatorial reign of Christ is not eternal ; 
it had a beginning and will have an end. While it was 
purposed and predicted from the dawn of human history, 
it was not fully inaugurated till the son of God became 
incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ. John heralded 



164 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

the coming when he preached that the "Kingdom of 
Heaven was at hand/' This mediatorial Kingdom of 
God will continue unto the end of the world, or, until 
all things shall be subdued unto Christ, and until the last 
enemy, death, is conquered, and the resurrection and 
judgment are accomplished. Then the purpose of the 
mediatorial reign being accomplished, Christ will de- 
liver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, and the 
Son, also, shall be subject unto Him that put all things 
under Him, that God may be all in all. 

Thus far commentators are substantially agreed. Sev- 
eral other great passages, emphasizing the same truths, 
and giving them enlargement and support, might be 
quoted. I select but one out of all : Phil. 2 : 10-11 : "That 
at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in 
heaven, and things in earth and things under the earth, 
and that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is 
Lord to the glory of God the Father. Other correspond- 
ing texts are : Eph. 1 : 10 and Col. 1 : 19-20. 

What now, let it be asked, is the definite purpose of 
Christ's mediatorial reign? So far as we know it has ex- 
clusive reference to the people of this world. The hu- 
man race was lost and beyond the reach of self recovery. 
The Son of God, in the person of Jesus Christ, by ap- 
pointment of the Father, and at infinite sacrifice, entered 
upon His mediatorial reign to rescue, as far as possible, 
the human race, individually and collectively, from the 
death of sin and its consequences. He came to seek and 
save the lost by redeeming all, and offering to help and 
save all who would accept of His gracious offer and be 
willing to be saved. The offer was universal. 

To the question : For what length of time are Christ's 
gracious offers extended? no definite answer is given. 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 



But the natural and almost necessary inference is that 
the offer is indefinite, or, at least that the offer is co- 
extensive with the mediatorial reign. Christ is Mediator 
between God and man, not to bring God down to men, 
but to bring men up to God. So long, then, as Christ 
is Mediator He will continue to mediate. Wherever 
souls are found, in the body or out of it, that need help, 
Christ's hand is extended to them ; and, if they lay hold 
of it they will be saved. The terms that are offered in 
this life, are offered in the life beyond. In the nature of 
things they could not be different. It seems to be an 
almost self-evident truth that Christ will not withhold 
mediation, while yet he holds the office of Mediator. I 
must believe this unless I find elsewhere a clear, positive 
denial in the Word of God. The onus probandi rests 
with those who limit Christ's mercy to this life. 

If this exposition does not quite harmonize with some 
of the creeds that men have formulated, it does, I be- 
lieve, harmonize with the real interior convictions of 
thoughtful, progressive, Christian people throughout the 
world. Most Christians hold views, often half uncon- 
sciously to themselves, apart from creeds, on the subject 
of life, death and the hereafter, that involve and necessi- 
tate the exposition I have given of Christ's mediatorial 
work in the Intermediate State. 

In confirmation of this, the following illustrations are 
worth considering: 

I. It is now conceded that all who die in infancy and 
before moral agency begins, are saved in heaven, and 
that Christ is their Saviour ; which means— must mean — 
that they come to know Him, trust in Him and enter into 
His service after death. All this implies intelligence 
and freedom such as was not possible for them in this 



l66 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DE5TIXY. 



world. Opportunities for faith and service must then 
be given them after death, and they must choose or re- 
fuse there, just as they would have done here. To ad- 
mit this — and who denies it — is practically to concede the 
premise — that the work of saving souls sometimes begins 
and goes on in the spirit world just as it does here. 

2. I know of no intelligent Christian who does not be- 
lieve that some, at least, of the countless millions who 
never heard of Christ in this world, will yet, in the last 
day be found among the saved. I should pity the man 
who thinks otherwise, and consider him a Pharisee. 
But what does such an admission signify? Not that 
they are saved apart from Christ, for there is no other 
name given under heaven whereby they can be saved. 
Their salvation, therefore, must be secured through the 
revelation and acceptance of Christ and of His Gospel 
revealed to them in the Intermediate State. There, they 
are freed from the errors and sins of this life, and become 
as the angels of God. Here again, we have "for sub- 
stance of doctrine" what my exposition claims. 

3. If, now, we glance at the Christian world, what do 
we find? We find here and there a man or woman who 
seems either almost perfect, or else almost hopelessly 
wicked. But, between these two extremes stand the. 
great majority whose characters are mixed. They are 
not wholly good nor wholly bad. And this is equally 
true of those who do, and of those who do not, profess 
to be Christians. They die as they live, and are not fit sub- 
jects for either heaven or hell. Death makes no change 
in their characters. It follows, then, that if any of these 
are saved, their salvation must be consummated through 
Christ in the place of departed spirits. Here, again, 
comes an admission of my exposition. 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 



167 



To say that the change in such cases is only one of 
degrees and not of direction, avails nothing because it 
is not true. They do change more or less in direc- 
tion and, were it otherwise, change of character, whatever 
it is, would show that the completing of character goes 
on under Christ's Mediatorship in the Intermediate 
State, which is the substance of my contention. 

4. Then, further, if it be conceded, as it is, that God 
must in honor do all that infinite wisdom, power and 
love can do for the final salvation of every soul that is, 
born into the world, and that Christ's mediatorial reign is 
established for that purpose, then, the question arises, has 
God, in this world, done for every child of Adam all that 
infinite wisdom and power, controlled by love could do 
to secure its eternal salvation? It does not seem so, and 
if not, then the work of saving must go on after death. 
Christian men believe this. 

5. How many aching hearts has the view I am advo- 
cating, comforted, and might have comforted? Many a 
sorrowing one has stood by an open grave where the 
feeling of loss was great, but the feeling of uncertainty 
was still greater. The loved one was not perfect in this 
life. Could perfection be attained in the life beyond? 
What comfort would an affirmative answer bring to this 
afflicted soul ! Most ministers speak and pray at funerals 
as if they believed, and wished the sorrowing ones to be- 
lieve, that God's mercy extends beyond this world. 
Why has God put such longings into human hearts if 
they are not to be satisfied? 

These illustrations are given partly in support of my in- 
terpretation, but chiefly to show T that most men do think, 
at times, outside of the creeds of the Church ; and that 
when they do so think, they are very sure to believe that 



i68 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



the mercy of God extends into the Intermediate State. 
In spite of creeds they do believe that — 

"There's a wideness in God's mercy, 

Like the wideness of the sea; 
There's a kindness in His justice, 

Which is more than liberty 

For the love of God is broader 

Than the measure of man's mind; 
And the heart of the Eternal 

Is most wonderfully kind." 

These illustrations are to be confirmed by facts. The 
view I am advocating is theoretically held by a majority 
of all professed Christians now living, or who have ever 
lived on earth. The entire Roman Catholic Church ac- 
cepts it, and has from the beginning, as is shown by 1 
their constant saying of masses for the dead. The Greek 
Church holds substantially the same view, although, on 
the question of Purgatory, they differ from the Catholics. 
Why should not prayers be offered for the dead? When 
our friends leave the body and enter upon the untried 
mysteries of an endless life, they need the prayers of the 
living, and would be grateful for them. Who would 
willingly be denied that privilege? 

The great poets of the world, Classic and Christian, 
who are supposed to be seers, express with hardly an 
exception, in poetic form, the same view. Homer, Dante, 
Browning, Tennyson, Goethe, Bryant, Longfellow, Low- 
ell, Whittier and the rest, sing in the same strain. In 
Dante's Divine Comedy, we have a human soul, that he 
himself personates, passing through purgatory and hell 
into heaven, where he beholds the face of God and is at 
rest. He is saved through suffering. Most of the poets, 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 



169 



as quotations would show, foreshadow hope for man in 
the great hereafter. The analogy of nature illustrates 
and proves the fact that change of character and prog- 
ress upward do not end at death. Such progress, slow 
but sure, is the central law of God's universe. If man, 
after leaving the body, is an exception to that law, he is 
the only exception to be found in the whole realm of 
nature ; and which is the more probable that nature con- 
tradicts herself or that theological dogma is at fault? 

Putting all the preceding considerations together, do 
they not invest the conclusion that Christ's mediatorial 
mercies extend into the Intermediate State with at least 
a high degree of probability? And, do they not afford 
presumtive evidence that the Bible is likely to teach 
along the same line? 

This brings us to the question : Are the Scriptures in 
harmony with this view? Do they sustain it? 

As for the Old Testament, until we come to its latest 
books, Daniel, for example, and to the Apocrypha, it has 
very little to say definitely on the subject of a future life. 
It deals with men as creatures of this world, in which 
they are to be rewarded or punished according to their 
deeds. The Hebrew people, coming from Egypt, where 
the idea of a future life was very prominent, must have 
known of that doctrine and believed it ; but God's plan 
with them was to take up one thing at a time ; and so, for 
centuries, the future world was left in the background. 
But this very silence awakens hope. Had there been no 
hope after death, would the Lord have left men ignorant 
on that great subject? 

Let us now turn to the New Testament and what do 
we find? We find, as we should expect, on this great 
question, much of mystery, much that is dimly revealed, 



170 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

and yet a light sufficient to guide our steps to safe con- 
clusions. 

We meet, in the New Testament, two classes of pas- 
sages, and only two, bearing directly upon the question 
of an Intermediate State. One class has reference to 
what, according to the generally accepted system of be- 
lief (and, at present, I have only this system in view), 
takes place at the end of the Intermediate State, which 
is spoken of as the final consummation, translated the 
end of the world. The other class of passages refers to 
what takes place in or during the Intermediate State, and 
while Christ is on the mediatorial throne. One class de- 
scribes events that begin where those of the other class 
end. One class describes finalities that reach on end- 
lessly; the other, a process of preparation for the final 
consummation. These two classes of texts must be kept 
apart, as they relate to wholly different things, and, to- 
gether, cover the entire ground. 

Take as an example the 25th chapter of Matthew, 
where, if taken literally and as commonly understood, we 
have a description of the final judgment. I do not need 
to paint the graphic picture. Here, as in various other 
places, we have a clear statement that, at the day of judg- 
ment there will be found two classes, the righteous and 
the wicked ; that the righteous will then be received into 
eternal life, and that the wicked will go into eternal death. 
This is the literal and commonly accepted meaning. 
Now, let all this be granted, and what has it to do with 
what takes place, or may take place, immediately after 
death, or, at any time during the Intermediate State? It 
has nothing to do with that question. We have, then, 
to throw out of this study all of the passages of the New 
Testament that relate to the final judgment and its 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 



171 



awards, at the end of the world, and to retain for exam- 
ination only those which refer to the intermediate period 
between death and finality. This separating and clearing 
process greatly simplifies the whole question. 

The Xew Testament has several words descriptive of 
the place into which spirits immediately enter on leaving 
the body. One of these is sheol, from the Hebrew, ren- 
dered Hades in the Greek. This word is strangely and 
wrongfully, as every scholar knows, translated in the 
common English version, hell. The New Version cor- 
rects the translation. The word Hades, wrongly trans- 
lated hell, more than all things besides has shaped and 
settled the faith, on this subject, of the Christian world. 
It has led to the belief that all Gospel mercies end at 
death. 

The word sheol or Hades has a clear and definite 
meaning. It signifies the place of departed spirits, 
whether they are good or bad. It is the place where all 
go, without regard to character, at death. The word, as 
every scholar knows, no more describes hell than it does 
heaven. The other words, with these, paradise, from the 
Greek and tartarus of classic signification, are all used 
in the Xew Testament interchangeably, and in the same 
sense, to designate the place of departed spirits. Para- 
dise may suggest the idea of pleasure, and Hades of pain ; 
but none of these interchangeable terms suggest, and 
much less mean, either heaven or hell as the final abode 
of the soul. This undeniable explanation removes the 
chief objection to the position that the offers of mercy 
may extend into the Intermediate State. 

But, it is asked, Are there no texts which clearly teach 
that the offers of mercy never extend beyond this life? 
My answer is, that after careful examination I find not 



172 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



one. It is said "that it is appointed unto man once to die 
and after that the judgment." Yes, but according to the 
creedal view how long after? Not till the final consum- 
mation of all things. It is said that we must give ac- 
count for the deeds done in the body. Yes, but not till 
the day of judgment at the end of the world; and, be- 
sides, it does not say that we shall not give account of 
the deeds done out of the body as well as in, perhaps 
thousands of years after they were committed. Is it 
not written that "as a tree falleth so it lieth?" Yes, but 
men are hard driven when they take refuge behind texts 
that appear to deny the fact of life after death. 

The only Scripture I know of that seems, at first glance, 
to make death the limit of mercy, is the parable of the 
Rich Man and Lazarus, in the 16th chapter of Luke. It 
is in no other Gospel. What does it mean? In the first 
place, about one-half of the critical commentators, and it 
has been so for centuries, hold that the parable has noth- 
ing to do with the subject. They class it with the pre- 
ceding parable of the unjust steward with which it stands 
connected. This parable, it is held, was spoken against 
the Jews. The rich man represents the self-righteous 
Jew, and Lazarus the miserable Gentile eating Jewish 
crumbs ; and that very soon the tables would be turned. 
This favorite exposition, if accepted, removes the parable 
from this study. 

But, suppose we take the literal interpretation, what 
then follows? The parable now shows, as its main les- 
son, that conditions in this world are often reversed in 
the next. To illustrate this it relates that the rich man 
and Lazarus died, and that both went to the place of de- 
parted spirits, where they were so near together that they 
conversed freely with each other, and with Abraham, 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 



173 



who was there also; and that Lazarus, being good, was 
happy, and that the rich man, being evil, was miserable. 
His conscience troubled him ; he was restless, and he 
prayed, not to God, but to his Father Abraham, for him- 
self and for his brthren. But it does not say that he, 
himself, might not have repented and been forgiven and 
saved. I do not know of one scholarly expounder of 
the parable, even among those who take the literal view 
of it, who does not emphatically declare that there is 
nothing here to show that the rich man might not and 
did not actually repent and find pardon. Trench, Meyer, 
Stier, Ellicott and many others take special pains to make 
this belief emphatic. Certainly it is neither impossible 
nor improbable. His troubled conscience argues it. If 
this is the only important passage in the Bible to hang 
the doctrine upon that offers no mercy through Christ, 
after death, — and I know of no other, — then it seems to 
me to be a very small peg on which to suspend so vast 
a conclusion. 

Now, on the other side, if it is asked : Is there explicit 
Bible evidence to the contrary? I cite the fact that Christ, 
according to Peter (3 : 18-19), after His death, went at 
once to paradise or Hades, where the antediluvian world 
was, and preached to them. If the offer of mercy was 
forever withdrawn, why did He do this? Not to tanta- 
lize them surely. 

Dr. Delitsch says that, "Christ manifesting Himself to 
the dead, in Hades, preached to them the victory that 
had come to pass. He preached to the Old Testament 
dead the New Testament Gospel of the now completed 
redemption. " If this be so, the question is settled. 

We have in the New Testament a class of passages 
which, if rightly interpreted, clearly show that where sin 



174 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

and death greatly abound in the world, grace and mercy 
through Jesus Christ do much more abound. In other 
words, that God has provided a remedy equal to the dis- 
ease. To some of these passages I can only here make 
reference: Rom. 5: 12-21 is clear on this point. I quote 
only from the 18th verse : "Therefore, as by the offense 
of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation ; 
even so, by the righteousness of One, the free gift came 
upon all men unto justification of life. For, as by one 
man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the 
obedience of one shall many be made righteous. More- 
over the law entered that the offense might abound. 
But, where sin abounded grace did much more abound ; 
that as sin has reigned unto death, even so, might 
grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, 
through Jesus Christ, our Lord." 

I submit that, apart from special pleading, the two 
statements, one as to death, and the other as to life, are 
parallel. One is just as broad and full as the other. 

1 Cor. 15: 21-22: "For, since by man came death, by 
man came also, the resurrection of the dead. For, as in 
Adam, all die, so also, in Christ, shall all be made alive. " 
Life and death here refer not chiefly to the body, but to 
the spirit. The terms are antithetic, and one clause is 
as broad as the other. If all die in Adam, not physically, ' 
but spiritually, then all will be made alive in Christ spirit- 
ually. On this text, H. A. W. Meyer says: "The two 
statements are equally universal." And Bishop Ellicott 
adds this comment : "Where God puts no limitation, let 
man be silent." 

In connection with these passages, read 1 Cor. 15 : 25- 
28. Eph. 1: 10. Phil. 2: 10-11. Col. 1: 19-20. 

Most surely no such results as these passages contem- 



THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 



175 



plate and declare have yet been reached by the Gospel 
of Christ, nor do I see how they can be in this world ex- 
cept in part. Only in the Intermediate State will Christ's 
complete and final victory over sin and death be fully 
achieved. 

The view here taken of the Intermediate State answers, 
indirectly, the question that every thoughtful person is 
sure to ask. It is this : What is to become of the count- 
less millions who shall have lived and died outside of the 
true Christian life, and before the ushering in of that 
millennial day that saves the living but not the dead? 
Are the dead annihilated? No. Are they in a state of 
unconscious sleep awaiting the sound of the last trump? 
Again, no. Where are they? They are in the Interme- 
diate State, unless they shall have gone beyond, listening 
to the voice of love and mercy which some of them never 
heard in this world; and which others, if they heard, 
heeded not. Their environments have now changed. 
The human body in which their existence had to begin, 
withitsbesetments,is thrown off ; good influences abound, 
and there is reason to hope that very many will there 
avail themselves of the still proffered grace of God in 
Jesus Christ and be fully saved, while all will yet come 
into such a mental state that existence will not be to any 
of them an infinite curse. 

The bearing of this whole study on the great problem 
of human destiny is so obvious that further suggestion 
is unnecessary. 

Of course, if, according to another view, a spiritual 
rather than literal construction is put upon those Scrip- 
tures that describe the general resurrection and final 
judgment, it would modify somewhat one's course of 
study, but it would not disturb the general conclusion as 



iy6 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



to the fact of an Intermediate State, and it would make 
more than probable the still larger fact that Christ's offers 
of mercy are co-extensive with His mediatorial reign, 
and extend, therefore, into the spirit world. This view 
will occupy a later chapter. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



177 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE ATONEMENT IN THE PROBLEM. 

It is claimed by theologians, and personal experience 
confirms the claim, that what is known as the doctrine 
of Atonement, or At-one-ment, is the deepest, most vital 
and important doctrine of the Christian Religion. Cer- 
tainly more has been written upon it, and it has been 
more a subject of contention and of metaphysical specu- 
lation than any other, unless the doctrine of the Trinity 
be an exception. 

The whole question centres in God as He is revealed 
in Jesus Christ, who sacrificed Himself and died, the just 
for the unjust, that the world might be saved. Some of 
the Scripture references that set forth this great fact are 
such as these : "He was made a curse for us." "He 
tasted death for every man/' "He was wounded for our 
transgressions, bruised for our iniquities/' "He bore 
our griefs and carried our sorrows." "He was offered 
to bear the sins of many." "God hath laid on Him the 
iniquity of us all." The Old Testament and New, 
abound with corresponding statements of the fact that, 
in some true sense, Christ identified Himself with men ; 
and, that He suffered in their behalf with them and for 
them. 

But this cannot mean that He takes the sinners place 
in such a sense that He Himself becomes a sinner; nor 



i 7 8 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



that He suffers literally the penalty that is involved in the 
sinner's transgression. 

Such a thing, if possible, would be unjust to every 
party concerned. It is something that God, in justice, 
could not permit. The innocent may suffer, may suffer 
willingly and gladly for the sinful in order to help and 
save them ; but they cannot take the guilt or punishment 
of others in any proper sense of those terms, upon them- 
selves. Such a thing is not possible. 

Christ bore the sins of men just as He bore their dis- 
eases, their afflictions and their sufferings. He felt for 
them, He was in deep sympathy, His heart went out to 
them, He longed to save them, and He was ready, joy- 
fully to sacrifice Himself in their behalf, if, by this means 
He could deliver them from sin and its consequences. 
Christ's suffering was not a legal infliction, but was the 
outcome of infinite love ; He loved us and therefore gave 
Himself for us. He bore our burdens ; or as the prophet 
puts it, "Himself took our infirmities and bore our sick- 
nesses/ 1 

He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows ju&t 
as He bore our sins ; they were on His heart, they caused 
Him pain and prompted Him to sacrifice Himself to save 
alike the suffering and the sinful. In this sense Christ's 
life and death were vicarious ; in this sense He tasted 
death, and made atonement, for every man. 

But this is not the sense in which such terms have been 
commonly used in theological discussions of the doctrine 
of Atonement. The word has been used in a legal, gov- 
ernmental, forensic sense, from which the moral element, 
perhaps unintentionally, has been largely excluded. No 
system of metaphysical formula can ever comprehend or 
explain the Biblical conception of Christ's Atonement; 



THE ATONEMENT. 



179 



and this because the thing to be explained is not a theory 
but an experience, a life, the life of love, that can no more 
be reduced to a scheme of doctrine than can a mother's 
love for her child, or the soul's breathing after God. 
This is not denying that there is a true philosophy that 
underlies all religion, but religion itself is not a philoso- 
phy, but is a life. 

What are some of the metaphysical theories that men 
have originated, and called the doctrine of Christ's Atone- 
ment? 

The underlying scheme which is never lost sight of is 
that which sets the justice and mercy of God at variance, 
and puts one over against the other, as if the two were 
antagonistic and irreconcilable. Justice is conceived of 
as the central attribute in the character of God, and mercy 
as holding a subordinate and dependent position ; so that, 
until justice is satisfied mercy cannot be extended. A 
common way of stating the case is somewhat as follows : 
God is a great king ; the moral universe is under a system 
of absolute law ; the central pillar of God's moral govern- 
ment is Divine justice; if penalty for sin should ever fail 
of execution according to its just deserts the moral Gov- 
ernment of God would be destroyed; the only way in 
which a sinner can ever escape the demands of exact 
justice, is for some substitute to take his place and en- 
dure his deserved penalty, whatever it may be ; and that 
Christ has, in this sense, as man's substitute, borne the 
penalty of all for whom He died, so that now God can 
be just and the justifier of him that believeth. 

Different ways are devised by which this scheme of 
substitution may be carried out. One favorite idea of 
former centuries was that all the people of this world are 
subjects of the devil's kingdom; and that God made a 



l8o THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

bargain with the devil that if he would deliver over a cer- 
tain number of souls to be saved, that Christ, the Son of 
God, should endure a penalty equal to that which these 
souls would have suffered if the agreement had not been 
entered into. Such a position is too absurd and dreadful 
to claim a moment's attention. 

Others have tried to harmonize justice with mercy, 
by denying that Christ, as the sinner's substitute, needs 
to suffer all the penalty that sinners would have endured 
in order to obtain mercy for them; and this, on the 
ground that the dignity of the sufferer made an equal 
amount of penalty unnecessary in order to the upholding 
of law and government. But here, again, the same 
vicious and false conception of transferring desert and 
penalty from the guilty to the innocent is involved ; a con- 
ception that, instead of vindicating justice, dishonors it, 
and Him who could permit such a transfer. The whole 
doctrine of imputation, whether of sin, of righteousness, 
of penalty or of reward, from one moral being to another, 
confounds and destroys the principle of justice, and, as 
we shall see, denies the fact of mercy. 

All such metaphysical schemes of Atonement as the 
above, rest on what is known as the quid pro quo basis, 
of so much for so much; that is to say, that, if Christ 
shall endure a certain amount of punishment, in place of 
the sinner, that then, a certain amount of penalty due to 
the transgressor may, on the ground of transfer or sub- 
stitution be remitted. What I have to say is that this 
entire conception is fundamentally wrong from whatever 
side it is looked upon. And this because : 

I- It involves a misconception of the nature and needs 
6i Divine government. It assumes that human and Di- 
vine governments are essentially alike, and that they are 



THE ATONEMENT. 



181 



subject to the same conditions, necessities and dangers, 
and must be upheld and administered by similar means. 
This view is wholly erroneous. The two governments 
are as different from each other as can be well conceived, 
as night is from day. 

The governments of men are weak and liable at any 
time to be overthrown. Their existence depends on the 
will of the people, without whose support kings could not 
be crowned; or, if crowned hold their scepters one day. 
They must be kept up and protected by armies, navies, 
penalties and prisons or soon fall in ruins. The govern- 
ment of God, physical and moral, is subject to no such 
contingencies ; it confronts no such dangers ; its laws are 
self-protective, and need none of the supports that are 
the necessity of human governments. The assumed anal- 
ogy does not exist, and therefore every application of 
the quid pro quo theory based on that analogy is without 
foundation in fact, and so is misleading and false. 

This fundamental distinction between human and Di- 
vine governments will be fully considered in its place 
later on. 

2. Justice is not the central attribute in the moral 
character of God, as the metaphysics in question as- 
sume, nor is mercy the central attribute. God's whole 
moral character is expressed in the word love or benevo- 
lence. It consists in choice, in ultimate choice, in choice 
of the highest good of Being in general, and of particular 
well-being, so far as the general good makes it possible. 
Love then, as we have before seen, is the sum of God's 
moral character; while justice, mercy and all other moral 
qualities are attributes or manifestations of love. It is 
then the love of God, not His justice, that is first of all to 
be considered and defended. Justice is love protecting 



1 82 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

general interests. Mercy is love seeking the good of the 
undeserving. Justice then, is not the central principle 
in God's character that is to be made foremost and be 
protected above all other interests, as the theories in 
question assume. This view of God puts a new face on 
the whole subject. 

3. Justice and mercy are not necessarily antagonistic, 
as the quid pro quo theory assumes them to be. Justice 
gladly yields everything that love can grant, and mercy 
wants nothing that love cannot give. The government 
of God is in no danger ; and both the justice and mercy 
of God are satisfied with anything that promotes the high- 
est good, and especially that brings pardon to penitent, 
trusting souls. There is then no conflict between them 
to be reconciled. They are both bound to the same prin- 
ciple, and seek the same end. And those, as we shall 
see, who force them into antagonism wrest the Scrip- 
tures, represent God as divided against Himself, and so 
do violence to reason and to justice. 

4. What perhaps is more obvious, and most fatal to 
all the theories under review is, that they logically defeat 
themselves. If Christ's sufferings as man's substitute, 
view them as you will, are a legal substitute for man's 
punishment, then sinners are saved, if saved at all, not on 
the ground of mercy, but on that of strict justice. If I 
am justly condemned to pay a fine which I cannot pay, 
and if my kind hearted substitute pays it for me, and if 
that substitution is accepted by the government, then it 
is no longer mercy that I ask for but justice. The debt 
has been paid, the penalty is satisfied, and I demand re- 
lease. This, so far as I can see, on any form of the 
quid pro quo basis is a logical conclusion ; so that all for 
whom Christ has suffered as a legal substitute have met 



THE ATONEMENT. 



183 



the conditions that strict justice demanded, and are saved 
on the ground, not of mercy, but of justice. I am not sure 
that the authors of Creeds which claim that Christ died 
only for a part of mankind, namely, for the elect, did not 
see the difficulty and intend to meet it on the ground that 
Christ, having borne the penalty of the elect ones, they 
are sure of their final salvation, and for that judicial rea- 
son. Of course this is another Gospel composed not of 
Divine love but human metaphysical speculation. 

The attempt then to make justice, and not love, the 
central and controlling feature in the character and gov- 
ernment of God, and to array justice against mercy as 
if they were naturally antagonistic is a failure. Justice 
and mercy find equally, and together, their place in the 
loving heart of a loving Father. What God wants and 
Christ seeks as the foremost end, is not strict justice, but 
the soul's salvation from sin and death. In this, love 
directs justice. 

The way is now prepared for the statement of one or 
two other views of the Atonement which, though still 
faulty, are not open to the same, or so great objections, 
as are those that have now been considered. The first 
of these views, and one which appears to prevail exten- 
sively at the present time, may be described as a modified 
and undefined holding of what is called the Governmental 
conception of Atonement. It is claimed, and rightly, 
that the Atonement must have some sort of relation to 
moral law and government, but just what that relation 
is we do not know, and cannot definitely define. The 
subject, it is said, runs so into the infinite, and is so lost 
there, as to be incomprehensible to finite minds. Some 
sort of Governmental relation it must hold, a relation that 
makes it safe and proper for God to bless and save sinful 



1 84 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

men on condition that they turn from sin and trust in the 
loving mercy of God, as revealed in Jesus Christ. While 
the former theories professed to know too much, and 
knew a great deal that was not so, this view, I think, 
should comprehend more of what it regards as incompre- 
hensible. The real Gospel is more simple, and more 
easily understood, than people who are looking for some 
great mystery are apt to think. 

Another view of Atonement, which has truth in it, so 
exaggerates that truth, as to carry it over to the side 
of practical error. In its attempt to exalt the love and 
moral excellence of Christ it represents Him as perform- 
ing works of supererogation for the saving of lost men. 
He went beyond the call of obligation, and did for man's 
salvation more than was His duty to do ; and these works 
of merit that extend beyond the call of duty, some claim, 
are placed to the credit of those who become penitent 
believers in Jesus Christ. It is needless to follow out the 
theory further than to say that, in one essential point it 
cannot be true. Works of supererogation are never pos- 
sible to any moral being ; and they are no more possible 
to God than they are to men. Christ in His incarnation 
and death carried out the law of love ; He did His whole 
duty ; but He did no more than, in the circumstances, He 
ought to have done. God could not have done more or 
better than He did ; and it would have been wrong, not so 
much perhaps to men as to Himself, to have done less. 
There is but one law of duty, and there can be but one 
in the moral universe. Ability, clearly apprehended, 
measures responsibility and duty. This law is obligatory 
on God and man alike. It must be so ; when God re- 
quires of men that they shall do unto others as they would 
that others should do unto them, He takes the same obli- 



THE ATONEMENT. 



185 



gation on Himself to do for the race that He has created, 
what He would desire and expect that race to do for 
Him w T ere He in their circumstances. It follows then, 
that to do one's entire duty, to meet one's obligations 
fully, is all that any moral being can do, and the least 
he should do; and this rule applies alike to God and 
man. 

One other insufficient view of the Atonement should 
be noted. I refer to what is sometimes known as the 
Moral Influence theory. It is said that the whole pur- 
pose of Christ's incarnate history was to make an im- 
pression upon mankind that God cared for them, and so 
to win their confidence. That Christ's Gospel is, in this 
way, a vast moral power is conceded ; but to say that 
Christ came, suffered and died for the one purpose of 
producing a moral effect upon men is to belittle the Gos- 
pel, and to turn the sublimest event in the universe into 
a spectacular performance. If Christ in His mission to 
earth, incidentally, did that, He did intrinsically and in- 
finitely more. Many who have been unable to accept 
substitutional theories of the Atonement have gone, at 
times, too far in the opposite direction, and have seemed 
to find in that great doctrine only an effort to create 
moral influence, which is certainly a sad lowering of the 
whole subject. 

We come then to ask : In what does the Atonement by 
Jesus Christ, so far as we can comprehend it, consist? 
In w 7 hat sense is it vicarious or substitutional? I answer, 
in the general sense that God, in the person of Jesus 
Christ, so took our sorrows, burdens, sins, diseases and 
sufferings of all kinds, upon Himself as to make them 
practically His own. There was no legal, polemic trans- 
ference in the case; but there was vastly more than that. 



1 86 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

Christ's whole heart, His feelings and deepest sympa- 
thies, His intense and infinite love were all in it. He put 
into it the sacrifice of personal suffering even unto death, 
that men might be saved. He did this willingly, joy- 
ously, for the sake of the end. For the joy that was set 
before Him, — the joy of saving a lost world, Christ en- 
dured the Cross and despised the shame, and is set down 
at the right hand of the throne of God. On this same 
principle of loving sacrifice, and sacrifice of love, all that 
is said of Christ in that wonderful Fifty-third Chapter of 
Isaiah, is to be explained. 

Christ stands in the same relation to the sufferings, dis- 
eases and sicknesses of men, that He does to their sins. 
He takes them all upon Himself, and bears them in His feel- 
ings and heart, almost as if they were His own. In proof 
and illustration of this, see the quotation in Matthew 
from that same Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah, which reads : 
"That it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Esaias, 
the prophet, saying — Himself took our infirmities and 
bore our sicknesses. ,, In the same sense then, in which 
Christ took and bore the sins of men He took and bore 
their infirmities and sicknesses. They did not become 
His literally, but He bore them on His heart, in His 
feelings and sympathies, much as a mother bears the 
afflictions and sicknesses of her beloved child. She 
makes them her own, and often feels them, and suffers 
more on account of them than does the child itself. The 
world is full of sacrifices of love for those we love. Nor, 
let it be objected that such sacrifices are a source of un- 
happiness to those who make them. That they give pain 
and suffering is true, but this is not inconsistent with 
the profoundest happiness. A mother is never so happy 
as when she is consciously bearing the infirmities and 
sicknesses of her children; and equally so whether the 



THE ATONEMENT. 



187 



children are wayward or loving. It is the same with our 
Divine Lord. The sufferings, sins, and consequent mis- 
eries of men enter into His heart ; He feels for them, 
longs to save them and is ready to sacrifice Himself and 
die for them. He does this, and His loving sacrifice for 
the saving of the world is His Atonement for men. 

God the Father feels and suffers in the same way, and 
for the same reason and end. It has sometimes been 
represented that Jesus Christ is more tender, loving, sym- 
pathetic and merciful than is the Father. But this is de- 
lusive. We are all the children of our Father in heaven, 
and He feels for us and loves us as only an infinite Father 
can. From eternity God has loved us, felt for us, and 
the great atoning sacrifice has ever been in His thoughts 
and on His heart, awaiting the time for development. 
It was the Father who commissioned the Son, that is to 
say, who incarnated Himself, that He might show His 
own heart to men, gain their confidence, save them from 
themselves and from sin, and bring them to trust Him, 
love and serve Him and so enter into eternal life. Christ 
and the Father in this whole movement are one, one in 
purpose, in feeling, and in sacrifice. 

The Holy Spirit has part also in the great Atonement, 
and is prompted by the same pure love and tender in- 
terest. He, too, is seeking to enlighten the minds of 
men, to show them the heart of God, to lead them out of 
sin and to make them holy and happy forever. While 
Christ is conspicuous in that He assumed human nature 
and died on the cross for men, yet, back of all that is the 
heart of God beating in tender and equal sympathy and 
love for a lost world. The Father and Son suffered to- 
gether, and are one in saving the world. 

But, it is asked, has not the Atonement any reference 
to the law and government of God? Certainly it has. 



1 88 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

Because Christ is not punished for us, and does not in 
that literal, legal and metaphysical sense bear our sins, 
we are not for a moment to conclude that He loses sight 
of, or has not due respect for, the moral law of God. 
It is just because men are lost in sin and cannot save 
themselves, or be saved, except by coming into obedi- 
ence to the law of God, that the atoning sacrifice was 
made. Christ cannot save men except He saves them 
from their sins. He would not if He could, and He could 
not if He would. Salvation necessarily implies con- 
formity, heart conformity, to the law of God, and so, to 
holiness in purpose and life. This is all that the Atone- 
ment undertakes to secure, and this is just the legal re- 
lation it sustains to the government of God. Such a re- 
lation is simple and natural, and, as would be shown if 
space permitted and it were needful, is pre-eminently 
Scriptural. 

In the preceding study old theories of the Atonement 
have been criticised, but nothing that can be called a 
theory, new or old, has been substituted in their place; 
and this for two reasons: ist. That the New Testament 
contains no theory of the Atonement; and 2d. Because 
the atoning work of Christ cannot be compressed into a 
theory or dogma. All attempts to do this have taken 
away its life and power. It must aways be so ; therefore, 
I refrain from dogmatizing on this deepest and most spir- 
itual of all subjects. Let Christ's atoning work rest 
where the Scriptures leave it; — an expression of God's 
love to men and of His infinite sacrifice in their behalf, 
for their present and eternal salvation. This, to use a 
theological and not a Scriptural term, is the Atonement. 
All that can further be said is, that Christ's conception 
of the Gospel included the whole, and not simply a part, 



THE ATONEMENT. 



of the human race; that He is not for one class and 
against another; but that His atonement and purpose 
are alike for all mankind. 

The bearing of this study of the Atonement on the 
problem of Human Destiny is apparent at a glance. If 
God, — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, — feels such an 
eternal interest in, and solicitude for our ignorant, sinful 
and lost race as has been represented, and if Christ, sent 
of God, has undertaken, at such infinite sacrifice the work 
of saving the world, and if the Holy Spirit, in accordance 
with Christ's promise, is taking the truth of Christ and 
revealing it to men in a special and persistent way, and, 
if God never wearies in well-doing, and never fails in 
what He undertakes, then there is ample ground for con- 
fidence that, at least the greater proportion of mankind, 
if not all, will, sooner or later, be won over, to His love 
and service. Why all this Divine sacrifice, suffering and 
prolonged endeavor if it is yet to leave the great propor- 
tion of all who have lived, and are now living, in the gall 
of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity forever? It 
cannot be. If God's heart is eternally on the side of men, 
to seek and save them, He will surely find some way, 
just to the universe, and honorable to Himself, for the 
accomplishment of His benevolent purpose. The end 
of the Atonement will be reached and understood when 
Christ, having been lifted up, shall have drawn all men 
unto Him, and shall have destroyed the works of the 
devil. Then, and not sooner, will He have seen the 
travail of His soul and been satisfied; then will the 
problem of Human Destiny have been solved. 



IOO THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE ADAMIC OR CREEDAL SYSTEM OF 
METAPHYSICS IN THE PROBLEM. 

The Gospel of Christ is not a Creed, nor is it a sys- 
tem of cold metaphysics. It is a "pure river of the water 
of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of 
God and the Lamb/' flowing freely, and in natural chan- 
nels, through the world and the ages "for the healing of 
the nations." This is what Christ meant the Gospel to 
be, what it was at the beginning, and would ever have 
been, had not men, by means of dykes, dams and other 
such devices sought to change its course and bring it 
within human limitations. 

The dykes, dams and side channels here referred to, 
are the historic Creeds of the Christian Church; and, I 
may add, the systems of Theology growing out of those 
Creeds, and in defence of them. The first fact to be here 
emphasized is, that these historic Creeds are strictly hu- 
man productions. They are the attempts of men to re- 
duce the truths of Christianity into scientific or meta- 
physical form. In that point of view they are interesting 
and proper. But there is no more of sacredness about 
them, or of binding authority upon the consciences of men 
in them, than there is in the conclusions of Astronomers, 
Geologists, Chemists and Botanists ; or than there is in 
treatises upon intellectual or moral philosophy. Truth, 
and that alone is sacred, and it matters not whence it 



THE ADAMIC OR CREEDAL SYSTEM. I91 

comes. All true science is sacred, because it is from 
God, and one department of science is hardly more sacred 
than another. The time has come when the nuptials be- 
tween Science and Religion should be everywhere and 
loudly proclaimed, for they are one, and should never be 
put asunder. 

And yet, historic Creeds, although they are the work of 
men's devising, and were formulated long ago, when the 
world was in intellectual darkness compared with the 
light that now shines, are generally held, in the Churches 
that adopt them, to be of so sacred a character that they 
must not be revised, but continued from one generation 
to another as the standards of Christian faith, and the 
tests of good fellowship ; and, often of membership in the 
Christian Church. If any clergyman doubts this let him 
read history, and that, too, of very recent date ; or, better 
still, let him come out squarely in the denial of some old 
and valued dogma in the Creed of his own Church, and 
he will find that the Creeds are not dead. They are still, 
in most parts of Christendom, electric wires full of life, 
and woe to him who ventures to touch them with unhal- 
lowed hands ! 

I suppose all are agreed that the historic Creeds of the 
Church embody a large amount of valuable and vital 
truth, expressed in such a way as to be instructive and 
profitable. Most persons concede that, in the early 
Christian centuries, when general intelligence was more 
circumscribed than it is now, some formulated statement 
of Christian doctrine, beyond what the New Testament 
contains, was desirable. All thoughtful people will fur- 
ther agree that the Creeds of the Church have, in vari- 
ous ways, been a great help and stimulus to Christian 
people in their struggles with evil, and in efforts to be 



192 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

steadfast in the work of the Lord. Some minds are so 
constituted that they need to have some authoritative 
guide outside of themselves and of the Bible, clearly writ- 
ten, to tell them just what to believe and what to do. 
This is the theory of the Roman Catholic Church, and 
has been, to a considerable extent of the Protestant 
Churches. 

The great majority of Christian people take their con- 
clusions on theological subjects more from Creeds than 
from all other sources combined. Why should they not, 
when these Creeds are made standards of authority for 
officers of the Church, if not for all its members; and, 
when, in many cases they are instilled into the minds of 
children with as much of faithfulness as is the Bible 
itself? 

The special reason for the present study is the obvious 
relation of Creeds to the problem of Final Destiny. If 
the Creeds are to be accepted literally, then alas for man- 
kind ! All hope of a happy issue is ended. A majority 
of the human race, it would seem, ought never to have 
been created ; for their existence must be to themselves, 
and largely without their own fault, not a blessing but an 
infinite curse. I cannot believe it. 

The Creeds that I have styled strictly historic are not 
numerous. Probably a dozen would complete the list, 
and of these, four or five have special prominence. One 
very noticeable fact is that all these Creeds, on their 
metaphysical side, — which, alone is here to be considered, 
— are practically alike, and appear to have had a common 
parentage. However much they differ on minor points, 
they all agree substantially as to the relation in which 
Adam stands to the human race; and they all seek in 
him, and not in the fact of man's animal nature, an ex- 



THE ADAM I C OR CREEDAL SYSTEM. I93 

planation of the low moral condition of the human family. 

Looking now at the Creeds themselves, and especially 
at the Westminster Confession, the first thing that strikes 
one's attention is a perverted view of the great doctrine 
of Divine Sovereignty. The Confession describes God 
as "Absolute, working all things according to the counsel 
of His own immutable and most righteous will, for His 
own glory." The Sovereignty of God, in the true sense 
of that term, is an undeniable and glorious fact. By ap- 
pealing to the imagination, it exalts God infinitely above 
our powers of full conception ; at the same time, it sinks 
ourselves, by comparison, into the depths of nothingness. 
But God's Sovereignty has limitations ; and it is not all 
for self-glorification. What exists of necessity He does 
not create nor control. Space and duration, the prin- 
ciple of Cause and Effect, the distinction between right and 
wrong, are necessary and eternal. God does not create 
them any more than He created Himself; and He is 
controlled by them, and is under law to them, as actually 
as are finite moral beings. God's obligations to the 
moral universe are as much greater than ours as God is 
greater than man. They are infinite. The very same 
intuitive principles of right, justice and honor that are 
binding upon men are binding upon God also. This was 
clearly shown in the fourth chapter of this series, upon 
the Honor, Justice and Love of God in the Problem of 
Human Destiny. It is indeed true that God is back of all 
that is finite in the universe, and is over all, in such a 
sense that a rational definition of the terms Sovereignty, 
Election, Foreordination, Predestination and Reproba- 
tion may be given that makes them acceptable, and ex- 
pressive of central truth. But when they are so defined 
and employed as to shut off human freedom in matters 



194 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

of right and wrong, and to make God the Author of sin, 
and the Punisher of men for what they never did or were 
guilty of, then vital truth is perverted and God dis- 
honored. God's sovereignty must not turn man into a 
machine, nor involve a system of absolute and universal 
fatality. 

The creedal representation of God's Sovereignty places 
Him above all law and all obligation, except to Himself, 
which is very far from the truth. The evil of this view 
consists not in the error itself, so much as in the fact that 
this error becomes a logical stepping stone to greater 
errors further on. 

The second criticism I have to make on the creedal 
view is akin to the first. It is this : That the metaphysics 
of the Creeds land, logically and necessarily, in the abyss 
of fatality. The Westminster Confession is a logical in- 
strument from beginning to end. Grant the major pre- 
mise and the conclusion follows necessarily. The major 
premise is the absolute sovereignty and foreordination 
of God ; the two combined. 

The Confession declares that "God hath foreordained 
whatsoever cometh to pass." This statement admits of 
no modification or limitation. Whatsoever, includes 
everything in the physical, intellectual, moral, and spirit- 
ual world. Nothing ever did or can take place other 
than, or different from, what God had foreordained and 
made not only a certainty, but, in the circumstances, a 
necessity. Much has been written by learned theo- 
logians to prove that the sin, fall and eternal death of 
angels and men were foreordained of God, and so, by in- 
ference, according to His holy will. This foreordination 
the Book describes to be something back of foreknowl- 
edge, and independent of it. His decree amounts to di- 



THE ADAMIC OR CREEDAL SYSTEM. I95 

rect or indirect causality emanating from Himself. If 
this does not mean essential fatality, I should be at a loss 
for words that could express that idea. 

Yet, there are people who insist that this must be a 
forced and unfair construction of the words used. Well, 
let us go further then, and introduce another and fuller 
quotation that comes almost immediately after, and as 
explanatory of, the first. It is the doctrine of Election, 
which is only another word for foreordination. "Some 
men and angels/' it says, "are predestined unto everlast- 
ing life and others are foreordained to everlasting death" ; 
and all this, in such a sense that "Their number is so 
certain and definite that it cannot be increased or dimin- 
ished." This same doctrine is further explained in the 
chapters on Providence, Effectual Calling and elsewhere ; 
and is substantially the doctrine of all the historic Creeds. 
It applies alike to the righteous and the wicked, to angels 
and to men, and to all events possible and actual; and, 
if it does not mean absolute fatality, then I repeat, that 
the idea cannot be put into words. On this point, which 
lies at the foundation of all virtue, it appears that the 
Creeds, and the school of materialistic sceptics are in 
substantial agreement. 

A third general criticism of the Creeds is that they take 
such views of sin and its punishment, as put dishonor and 
injustice upon the character of God, and therefore must, 
to that extent, be false. They do this in several ways : 
1. They make the very nature of man, as God created 
it, sinful and deserving of eternal punishment. 2. They 
represent man as created with utter inability to do good, 
and then, as deserving endless punishment for want of 
ability to do what he cannot do, and for not doing it. 
3. They represent God as punishing the innocent for the 



I96 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

sins of the guilty. If these three points are sustained by 
the following quotations, then how can the honor and 
justice of God be longer maintained under that system? 

Turn first to the Westminster Confession of Faith. 
It says : "A corrupted nature was conveyed from our first 
parents to all their posterity. From this original cor- 
ruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled and 
made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil 
do proceed all actual transgressions." Then the Book 
explains what this corruption of nature means, as fol- 
lows : "Both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly 
and properly sin." Then, it adds : "Every sin, both orig- 
inal and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law 
of God and contrary thereunto doth of its own nature 
bring guilt upon the sinner whereby he is bound over to 
the wrath of God and curse of the law, and so made 
subject to death and all miseries, spiritual, temporal 
and eternal. " The sinful nature that God put into man 
at his creation works all this ruin. One cannot help 
asking in such a case, who is the sinner? 

Most of the other historic Creeds are still more em- 
phatic on these points. The synod of Dort asserts, in 
reference to the "propagation of a vicious nature," "that 
all men are conceived in sin and born the children of 
wrath, disqualified for all saving good, propense to evil, 
dead in sins, and the slaves of sin ... . they neither are 
willing, nor able to turn to God, to correct their depraved 
natures, or to dispose themselves to the correction of it." 

The Augsburg Confession reads : "We mean by orig- 
inal sin that which the holy fathers and all of sound judg- 
ment and learning in the church do so call, namely, that 
guilt whereby all that come into the world are, through 
Adam's fall, subject to God's wrath and eternal death 



THE ADAM I C OR CREEDAL SYSTEM. I97 

and that very corruption of man's nature derived from 
Adam." The thirty-nine Articles of the English Church 
read : "Original sin is the fault and corruption of the 
nature of every man that is naturally engendered of the 
offspring of Adam. Every person born into this world, 
it deserveth God's wrath and damnation." 

The French Confession speaking of Original sin, says : 
"We believe that the stain is indeed sin, because it 
maketh every man (not so much as those little ones ex- 
cepted which are yet hid in their mother's womb) de- 
serving of eternal death before God." 

The Westminster Confession expresses the belief 
"That elect infants will be regenerated and saved." But 
what of the others ! 

The above quotations are only specimens selected out 
of a great multitude from different sources and of sim- 
ilar import. The Belgian, the Bohemian and the Mora- 
vian Confessions, all echo the same note. Calvin, the 
elder Hodge, and other such writers of influence defend 
and repeat the positions formulated in the Creeds. 

I submit that the three points stated above are abun- 
dantly sustained by the quotations given, and that they 
charge God with treating that as sin which cannot be 
sin; that He punishes the innocent for the guilty; that 
He deprives men of all ability to do good and then sends 
them into eternal torment for not doing what they can- 
not do. If such doctrines do not put dishonor upon 
God, then, I am unable to see what could be dishon- 
orable. 

A fourth criticism, closely allied to the above is, that 
the supporters of the historic Creeds are obliged to admit 
that, judged by the moral standard of intuitive justice, 
God's treatment of men cannot be vindicated ; and that 



I98 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

therefore God is not bound by the principles of right, 
justice and honor, as other moral beings are. If this 
shall be found true, it is a fearful accusation. It dis- 
honors and dethrones God. 

Two of the ablest thinkers and writers that France ever 
produced were Abelard and Pascal. They were both 
strong adherents of the historic Creeds, and would, I 
suppose, have accepted without hesitation as true, all 
that is contained in the above quotations. But they both 
saw that the "Adamic theory" was utterly inconsistent 
with the intuitive principles of honor and justice, as re- 
vealed in reason and conscience. They must, therefore, 
either deny the Creed or admit that God was dishonora- 
ble and unjust, according to the dictates of intuitive hu- 
man reason and conscience. They both, but apart from 
each other, elected the last alternative, and exempted God 
from any obligation to act on the principles of honor and 
justice, as revealed in reason and conscience. I quote 
their words. First Abelard, as follows: 

"Would it not be deemed the summit of injustice 
among men, if any one should cast an innocent son, for 
the sin of a father into those flames, even if they endured 
but a short time. How much more so, if eternal ! Truly, 
I confess this would be unjust in men, because they are 
forbidden to avenge even their own injuries. But, it is 
not so in God, who says vengeance is mine, I will repay, 
etc." 

Here Abelard exempts God from moral obligation, 
and puts the arbitrary will of God above the law of right, 
justice and honor. Now listen to Pascal : 

"What can be more contrary to the rules of our 
^wretched justice than to damn eternally an infant incapa- 
ble of volition, for an offense in which he seems to have 



THE ADAM I C OR CREEDAL SYSTEM. 199 

no share, and which was committed six thousand years 
before he was born. Certainly nothing shocks us more 
rudely than this doctrine ; and yet, without this mystery, 
the most incomprehensible of all, we are incomprehensi- 
ble to ourselves." 

Here again, right, honor and justice are made to fall 
before the historic Creed. Dr. Hodge takes substan- 
tially the same view. Speaking of God's dealings with 
mankind, he says that "They cannot be explained on the 
common sense principles of moral government. The 
system that Paul taught was not a system of common 
sense, but of profound and awful mystery." 

Dr. Woods, Dr. Chalmers and many others make sim- 
ilar admissions, but try to hide the injustice under the 
cloud of awful mystery. It is a mystery of horror, be- 
cause it strikes dow T n every principle of right and justice 
in God ! It leaves the world and the universe with no 
moral standard of duty ; for, when the voice of reason and 
conscience is denied as of universal obligation, then we 
have no guide, and might as well (or better) be brutes as 
men. And, as for God, if He is above the eternal prin- 
ciples of right and justice, then, how can He be God, 
or an object of intelligent worship. The weak plea that, 
to save the Creeds, resolves the whole matter into pro- 
found mystery, and there leaves it, is scarcely worthy of 
intelligent respect. It is the story of the foolish ostrich 
over again. 

I must pass on to a fifth line of criticism, which is that 
the Adamic System of metaphysics, as it has been given 
from the Creeds, is impossible of belief, except on the 
basis of some unnatural, unfair, forced and false principle 
of interpretation. The advocates of the creedal doctrines 
see that explanation is necessary; and hence they are 



200 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

ever trying to find some way of escape from the natural 
meaning of words. Dr. Hodge, for example, after ad- 
mitting that no person can be properly condemned who 
has not had a fair probation, goes on to say that all men 
had such a fair probation in Adam ; and also, that children 
are not condemned and sent to hell for Adam's sin, but 
for the sins which they themselves committed in Adam 
long before they existed ! Then comes in the theory of 
imputation, as if moral character could be imputed in 
any proper sense of that term. It is further claimed that 
the nature of man is not sinful, but something back of na- 
ture, as if there were anything back of nature except God. 
Is God then the sinner? The whole plea of mystery is an- 
other attempt to escape natural conclusions. The plea is 
itself a confession of error. One more way of escape is, 
to turn upon certain other inconsistent critics and ex- 
claim : "You are another just as bad." This will appear 
in the next chapter on Creedal Metaphysics Revised. 
Others again fall back on the authority of the great and 
good men who have formulated the creeds as if they were 
inspired to do their work ; and others still point to the 
noble Christian characters that have been formed under 
the inspiration of the Creeds, as if this made them true. 
Others still hide under the cloud of federal headship. 

These are only a part of the apologies and misin- 
terpretations that are resorted to in order to make the 
Creeds possible to rational belief. And, I submit that 
most of the explanations are no better than the Creeds 
themselves, and some of them are even worse. What 
are these dogmas but a chamber of horrors from which 
every person having eyes should shrink away, unless he 
has also nerves of steel. 

As we should naturally expect, there never has been 



THE ADAMIC OR CREEDAL SYSTEM. 201 

agreement among thoughtful Christian people in the in- 
terpretation and support of the "Adamic System" as con- 
tained in the Creeds, unless possibly during the dark 
centuries before the Reformation. When the Nicene 
Creed was adopted, the minority against it on this and 
other grounds was so strong as to make it doubtful, for a 
long time, as to which side would finally win ; after the 
Council, the struggle went on with various vicissitudes 
for two or more centuries. Then, as regards the West- 
minster Confession of Faith adopted 250 years ago, 
how was it adopted? The assembly was made up of 
Presbyterians, men from the Church of England and 
Congregationalists or Independents. The Presbyterians 
were in the majority, and largely so after they brought in 
the delegates from Scotland. But throughout those pro- 
tracted sessions and heated debates the most determined 
opposition was manifested. Finally, the Church of Eng- 
land members virtually withdrew 7 , and the Congrega- 
tional members, eight or ten, I think (and they were men 
of great learning and influence) kept up the fight, not all 
along the line, but at certain points. To illustrate : At 
one of the sessions, Peter Nye, in a speech from the 
floor, said earnestly : "Every man has a right to worship 
God according to the dictates of his own conscience, be 
he Christian, Papist, Mahometan, Jew or Pagan/' These 
awful words created consternation in the assembly; the 
conservative members lifted their hands in holy horror, 
and exclaimed aloud against the sacrilegious utterance. 
The tumult was so great that the presiding office had, at 
once, to adjourn the session that the passions of the 
members might cool off. 

The Confession, by a large majority vote, was finally 
adopted. Now what followed? In a short time, the 



202 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

Presbyterians of England who had gained their victory, 
became themselves tired of the instrument which they 
created; and a large part of them not only renounced 
allegiance to the Creed but, by reaction, became Unitari- 
ans, or joined the Independents ; so that, for a long time 
there were almost no Presbyterians left in England ; and 
the Scottish Divines had to uphold the Creed and give it 
the name it has since carried. But, of late, if reports be 
credited, the Scottish clergy are falling off from the old 
faith and into line with what is called the New Theology. 

Almost everywhere, except, perhaps, in the Southern 
States of America, there seems to be a. disposition to let 
the historic Creeds sleep in peace. Occasionally there 
is an outburst of old orthodoxy, but it is of short dura- 
tion. The world is changing, and it may not be long be- 
fore the metaphysics of old historic Creeds w r ill sleep 
with honor, overshadowed by sacred memories, in na- 
tional archives beside the recovered relics of Egypt, As- 
syria and Babylon. May they rest in peace. 

How have these old Creeds been used to conjure with 
in other days ! What grim, grand men of iron heart and 
hand they have nurtured for the holy war ! How stead- 
fast and conservative they have been, always the foes of 
progress, scientific and theological, regarding themselves 
as finalities. How, on the cry of heresy, they have been 
ready, in olden times to unsheath the sword or kindle 
the fires of martyrdom for the destruction of such as did 
not bow before the Creed. But this is almost over now, 
and the brave old Creeds may rest in peace, while the 
ark of God moves on, with no hand but the hand of 
Christ to guide its way into the kingdom of God amid 
the Alleluiahs of a ransomed world. 

How came such Creeds as these under review ever to 



THE ADAMIC OR CREEDAL SYSTEM. 



203 



exist? They were born partly of Greek fatalistic philos- 
ophy, and partly from the last half of Paul's fifth chapter 
to the Romans. All who are familiar with the early Cen- 
turies of Christian history know that the foremost men 
of the churches were familiar with Greek philosophy — 
the popular religion of that time — and that, naturally, a 
desire existed to bring the Christian religion, — then, also, 
becoming popular,— as far as practicable into harmony 
with prevailing philosophic conceptions. This explains, 
as I think, how it was that so much that seems foreign 
to the teachings of Christ came into the theology of 
those early times. Augustine himself, once a professor 
of Greek philosophy, was probably foremost, though in 
part unconsciously, in that kind of service. 

If the Adamic system has any Scripture basis, it will 
be found, as intimated, in a few verses of Paul's fifth 
chapter to the Romans. The substance of these verses, 
as any one can see, lies in these two propositions: 1st. 
That all men died in Adam. 2d. That all men were 
made alive in Christ. The two statements are parallel, 
and one is as broad and all-embracing as the other. 
Death and life are exact opposites. If one is spiritual 
death and exposure to eternal punishment, the other, as 
we have seen, is spiritual life and deliverance from eternal 
punishment. We have then here a dilemma with two 
horns. If those who hold the creedal view will accept 
the second horn of the dilemma, I should not think it 
worth while to contend against the first; for then, the 
creation of the human race would be an infinite good, 
and not, as on the other hypothesis, to the great propor- 
tion of the human family, an infinite curse. One horn 
of the dilemma corrects the other, and harmonizes not 
only this passage but the whole subject to which it 
relates. 



204 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



The bearing of this study upon the problem of Man's 
Destiny, if not perfectly obvious, may be stated in a 
word : The historic Creeds are the historic obstacle to 
Christian hope. If the Adamic philosophy is not true, 
then a system of faith, very different from that, if only 
we can find what it is, must be true. This study en- 
courages hope and earnest search for truth, and promises, 
as a result of honest, earnest endeavor, help from God and 
deliverance for the world. The historic Creeds from other 
points of view will be continued, and more definite con- 
clusions reached, in the following chapter. 



THE CREEDAL VIEW MODIFIED. 



205 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CREEDAL VIEW MODIFIED IN THE 
PROBLEM. 

The preceding chapter was a study of the historic 
Creeds according to their natural and intended meaning. 
It would seem impossible that the interpretation which, 
for example, the framers and supporters of the West- 
minster Confession first put upon it, should always be 
acceptable. It has not been. This chapter is to con- 
sider some of the changes that have taken place, and 
what has produced them. 

That revisions and modifications of the old theory have 
taken place in the thoughts and actions of men in the last 
century, I suppose no one will deny. Not so much that 
the Creed itself has been changed, as that its interpreta- 
tion is no longer what it once was. The Creed now is 
very generally accepted, not literally as it reads, but "for 
substance of doctrine" ; and that substance is usually or 
often made to mean whatever good judgment and com- 
mon sense endeavor to read into it. Even those who, in 
theory and profession would question the correctness of 
this statement, yet in practice admit the change, and, if 
clergymen, they preach and pray, not as the Creed reads, 
nor as ministers preached and prayed one hundred years 
ago, but in a sensible way, just as if they believed that 
all men if they will, can and should repent of their sins 
and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to the saving of 



206 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

their souls. It is a departure from the old and natural 
interpretation of the Creed, and not adherence to it, that 
inspires the preaching and gives it power over men at 
the present day. 

The changes have been most manifest in New Eng- 
land, in Old England, in Scotland and, perhaps, in Ger- 
many; and they have been, I suppose, least apparent in 
the Southern States of America and throughout the Ro- 
man Catholic Church. But, everywhere, a loosening and 
liberalizing spirit is manifest, and the movement goes on 
with augmenting power, bearing the fruits of mutual 
confidence and greater brotherly love, while it gains the 
respect of the outside world. The narrowness, coldness, 
bigotry and spirit of crimination and recrimination that 
characterized earlier days is yielding to the genial and 
harmonizing tendencies that a more or less changed view 
tends to produce. 

Changes in the interpretation of the Creed began in 
the first half of the eighteenth century. Jonathan Ed- 
wards, one of the purest men and profoundest thinkers 
that America ever produced, and Andrew Fuller of Eng- 
land, both firm believers in the Creedal orCalvanistic sys- 
tem as a whole and both extremely conservative, were yet 
forced by their convictions to become theological re- 
formers. Practical difficulties, as is usual in such matters, 
obliged them to take an advanced step, — only one step 
instead of many, — that served as an entering wedge that 
was afterwards to be driven its full length. That step 
was a denial of man's real inability to obey and seek God ; 
and the affirmation that what is called inability is simply 
a determined unwillingness, or, as it was then phrased, 
"moral inability" and not natural. This simple distinc- 
tion was the "elephant's proboscis pushing itself into the 



THE CREEDAL VIEW MODIFIED. 



207 



china shop." On all other points Edwards and Fuller 
appear to have been, however illogically, firm believers 
in, and able advocates of, the old creedal system. 

The practical facts that forced these great and good 
men to make their new departure were such as were felt 
in common by the observant and thoughtful men of their 
age, namely: That the old Adamic system of doctrines 
was found to be unpreachable. They put no responsi- 
bility upon an unbelieving, sinful, dying and yet utterly 
helpless world. How could the minister call his uncon- 
verted hearers to do, and blame them for not doing, what 
confessedly they had no sort of ability to do? In times 
of persecution and outward conflict, when there was no 
leisure to consider logical difficulties, the doctrine was 
proclaimed in a way that gave firmness, stability and en- 
couragement to Christian people. But later on, when 
quiet was restored, and the Church settled down to 
earnest thought and work for a lost world, how could it 
consistently address that world, if no member of it had 
any sort of ability to respond to the appeal any more, ac- 
cording to the accepted theory, than if he had been a 
block of wood or stone? 

As a consequence, the Gospel was, as a rule, no longer 
preached to the unconverted, but only to the saints, to 
whom, in regeneration, the gift of freedom had been im- 
parted, or rather created as a new power. As a matter 
of fact, so history relates, in New England and in Old 
England, the pulpit rarely addressed itself to the unsaved 
part of its hearers. The old Puritan Churches failed 
more and more in this respect, as both Edwards and 
Fuller testify, until religion fell almost to its lowest ebb, 
and iniquity was coming in like a flood. The Church 
with its "half-way Covenant" was fast losing power, and 



208 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



the world was losing hope, when Jonathan Edwards, after 
much mental struggle and reflection repudiated the old 
doctrine of absolute inability, and proclaimed that the 
sinner's inabilty w r as his persistent unwillingness. This 
view, whether consistent or not with other beliefs still 
held, threw responsibility upon the sinner. His un- 
willingness or moral inability was voluntary, and so, in- 
stead of freeing him from responsibility, only increased 
his guilt. This new doctrine in New England and across 
the sea, with only dissent here and there, was caught up 
with avidity and preached with great power. As might 
have been expected, there was at once, as was said a great 
"shaking among the dry bones" and one of the most 
powerful revivals of religion ever known immediately 
followed ; a full account of which was afterwards given 
by President Edwards. 

This is the first epoch in the new revision or modifica- 
tion of the Adamic Theory. One battle had been fought 
and won, but the war was not yet ended. Other theo- 
logical reforms had to follow or the victory already 
gained on logical grounds would have to be lost. At 
this period, and to meet the necessity, another thinker is 
raised up in the person of Rev. Samuel Hopkins, D.D., 
who was a student of Jonathan Edwards, and who car- 
ried his reform views beyond those of his master. Dr. 
Bellamy, and others, wrought along the same lines. Dr. 
Hopkins held that all sin consists in selfishness, and all 
virtue in benevolence; both of which are voluntary 
choice. He held that the impotency of sinners in respect 
to believing in Christ is not natural but moral, for, as 
he says : "It is a plain dictate of common sense that nat- 
ural impossibility excludes all blame. "An unwillingness 
of mind is a crime and not an excuse, and is the very 



THE CREEDAL VIEW MODIFIED. 



209 



thing wherein our wickedness consists/' He also denied 
the doctrine of imputation, both of Adam's sin and of 
Christ's righteousness. These are his words : "Though 
men became sinners by Adam, yet they have and are ac- 
countable for no sins but their own. Adam's act in eat- 
ing the forbidden fruit w r as not the act of his posterity; 
therefore they did not sin at the same time he did. The 
sinfulness of that act could not be transferred to them 
afterwards, because the sinfulness of an act can no more 
be transferred from one person to another than can the 
act itself." He says again : "That, though believers are 
justified through Christ's righteousness, yet His right- 
eousness is not transferred to them. Personal righteous- 
ness can no more be transferred from one person to an- 
other than personal sin." Thus he clearly repudiates the 
dogma of imputation. 

One other controverted doctrine of the Creedal sys- 
tem, and one which bears on the great problem of Des- 
tiny, has been incidentally referred to ; but, as it had 
a large place in the old discussion and its issues, it should 
be more fully stated. It is that of limited and of general 
atonement. The theory of the Creeds is that Christ died 
only for the elect; and that His coming into the world, 
and His death on the cross, had no more to do w r ith the 
non-elect than it had with fallen angels. "A certain num- 
ber, so definite that it could not be diminished or in- 
creased" were, by God's decree to be saved, and all the 
others, by that same decree were to be eternally lost. 
This is what, for convenience, I shall call the Old School 
doctrine. 

The New School divines denied the dogma of limited 
atonement and held, both on the grounds of reason and 
revelation, that "Christ tasted death for every man" im- 



210 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

partially, and as much for one as for another. If this 
be true, — and it must be, or, as we have seen, God would 
be dishonered and man treated unjustly, — then, on Old 
School principles the doctrine of universal salvation is 
clearly established. What the old or Creedal doctrine 
had always contended for was, that all for whom Christ 
died will be saved ; for all these belong to the elect. Now 
if, as the Bible teaches, and as the New School reformers 
contended, the atonement of Christ was general and not 
particular, then all men will be saved. I see no logical 
escape from this conclusion. 

Thus the work of revision went on, becoming more 
advanced and more clearly defined until the freedom of 
the Will, or power of contrary choice, and the fact that 
Christ died equally for all men and not for the elect alone, 
and other kindred doctrines, were clearly developed and 
formulated. In this completing process such men as Dr. 
Taylor of Yale, Professor Finney of Oberlin, and others 
had a guiding influence. The system of doctrines known 
as New School Theology, as against the Old School Sys- 
tem, was clearly defined. 

Two results immediately followed : One was the great 
revival, mainly under New School guidance, that pre- 
vailed extensively, continuing for nearly fifteen years 
from about 1830 onward. The other result was the 
sharp conflict that now sprung up between the leading 
advocates of the two systems. And, curiously enough, 
the matter of contention was not as to the positive beliefs 
of the two sides, whether they were right or wrong, but 
largely as to whether either party could justify its position 
in the light of those intuitive principles of honor and 
justice which all sides in the controversy professed to ac- 
cept and respect. The relation of the Old School posi- 



THE CREEDAL VIEW MODIFIED. 



211 



tion to those principles has been already considered. 
Unfortunately for the New School side of the contro- 
versy, as I think, it still retained certain elements of the 
Adamic system, and put such interpretations on them, as 
naturally to open its position to some of the very objec- 
tions and inconsistencies that are charged so unmerci- 
fully, yet logically, upon the Old School doctrines. 

In order to avoid misapprehension, I will here place 
the tvvo views side by side, in as deflnte language as pos- 
sible. The ablest interpretors of the Old School system 
reject the accusation that makes the race guilty of Adam's 
sin, and hold that each man is guilty of his own sin com- 
mitted in Adam. It denies that man is condemned to 
eternal death without a reasonable probation, and claims 
that each man had such a probation in Adam his federal 
head, ages before he was born ; and, sinning under that 
probation, he is condemned. This is the Old School 
view. 

What, now, do New School men hold? Denying the 
positions above stated, and claiming that sin is always 
a voluntary act, they insist that man's connection with 
Adam, though not sinful in itself, is yet of such a nature 
as to bring his whole physical and mental being, on his 
entrance into the world, into such a disordered con- 
dition that, as soon as moral agency or the ability to 
discern right and wrong begins, he is certain to fall into 
sin against God, and so under condemnation to eternal 
death, not for Adam's sin, nor for his own sin in Adam, 
but for actual transgression of the known law of God, 
committed voluntarily as a rational moral being. 

Just this is the vital distinction. What now do the ad- 
vocates respectively, of the two systems, think and say of 
each other? Each side charges the other with holding 



212 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

views that are dishonoring to God, and in violation of 
those distinctive and universally accepted principles of 
right, of honor and of justice that God has implanted in 
every heart, and which must be alike obligatory upon 
God and man. The New School man's view of the Old 
School theory is voiced in the words quoted from the 
Creeds in the previous chapter, or, better still, in the 
following quotation from Whelpley, in his famous book 
entitled "The Triangle/' He says : 

"You shall hear it inculcated from Sabbath to Sab- 
bath in many of our churches that a man ought to feel 
himself actually guilty of a sin committed six thousand 
years before he was born ; nay, that prior to all considera- 
tion of his own conduct he ought to feel himself deserv- 
ing of eternal damnation for the first sin of Adam 

I hesitate not to say that no scheme of religion ever propa- 
gated among men contains a more monstrous or more 
horrible tenet. The atrocity of this doctrine is beyond 
comparison. The visions of the Koran, the fictions of 
the Veda, the fables of the Zendavesta, all give place to 
this. Babbinical legends, Brahminical vagaries, all van- 
ish before it The idea that all the numerous millions 

of Adam's posterity deserve the ineffable and endless 
torments of hell for a single act of his before any one of 
them existed is repugnant to that reason which God has 
given us ; is subversive of possible conceptions of justice. 
It is an insult to every man's unbiased understanding, — 
;to the light of his conscience." 

This long quotation might be longer ; and similar ex- 
pressions from other New School writers might be quoted 
indefinitely ; but let this suffice. 

Now, what does the Old School man think of the New 
School position? It throws back again almost the lan- 



THE CREEDAL VIEW MODIFIED. 



213 



guage with which it has itself been pelted ; and, on sub- 
stantially the same grounds, namely: That the New 
School doctrine is in utter violation of the very laws of 
right and justice that God has put into human hearts, 
and which the New School charge the Old School with 
trampling in the dust. They begin with charging that the 
New School concedes the physical and mental depravity 
of man prior to the dawn of moral agency, which, they 
say, though not in itself sinful, is yet the fruit of man's 
connection with Adam, and which in all cases leads men 
into sin and under condemnation of eternal death just as 
soon as moral agency begins. It is claimed that this 
doctrine of a deteriorated nature, resulting in the universal 
certainty of a consequent actual and total depravity or 
sinfulness, brings no relief as regards the alleged conflict 
with the intuitive principle of justice. One of those prin- 
ciples, as Dr. Hodge, Dr. Alexander, and, indeed, all au- 
thorities in morals affirm, is, "that all new created be- 
ings must be placed in a condition as favorable to a 
happy as to an unhappy conclusion; that fairness and 
justice demand this." Such a condition they say "means 
a real probation before character and destiny is decided. 
Now, they go on to assert, that the New School doc- 
trine holds that without any probation whatever, God 
has placed the race, each individual of it from birth, in 
a condition of such physical and mental weakness and 
tendency to sin, and has surrounded all men with so 
many temptations, that their first moral act is certain 
to be sinful, and to involve them in eternal condemna- 
tion. Such a scheme, they say, is dishonorable to God 
and unjust to man. It withholds from man any reason- 
able chance of escape, and does this without any sort of 
probation prior to his falling into sin. 



214 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



I now quote from Dr. Hodge and the Princeton Di- 
vines. 

"The New School," he says, "represents the race as 
being involved in ruin and condemnation without the 

slightest probation Men are brought up to their 

trial under a divine constitution which secures the cer- 
tainty of sinning, and this is done because an individual 
sinned thousands of years before a majority of them 
were born ! Is this a fair trial?" This is the very argu- 
ment that the New School urges against the Old, and 
which the Old tries to escape on the ground partly of im- 
putation, but chiefly on the plea that all men had a fair 
probation in Adam. Dr. Woods repeats Dr. Hodge in 
these words : "And is there not just as much reason to 
urge this objection against the theory just named?" (that 
of a corrupt nature ensuring sin and ruin without any pre- 
vious forfeiture of rights). "Its advocates," he goes on 
to say, "hold that God brings the whole race into exist- 
ence without holiness and with such propensities, and in 
such circumstances, as will certainly lead them into this 
fearful condition in consequence of their first father with- 
out any fault of their own." He goes on to argue that 
so far as the justice and goodness of God are concerned, 
one theory is just as open to the charge of trampling on 
the intuitive principles of right and justice, and so of 
dishonoring God, as is the other ; except, that the creedal 
theory gives to man a probation in Adam, which the 
New view denies. 

"Who shall decide when doctors disagree?" Very 
likely, in this case, the final decision will be that each 
is right, as against the other, and that both are wrong as 
against those intuitive principles of right, justice and 



THE CREEDAL VIEW MODIFIED. 



215 



honor which, as some one has said, "must stand and be 
held sacred if the heavens fall." 

This intellectual contest between Old and New School 
doctrines became more and more earnest as the years 
went on ; and, especially so in the Presbyterian Church, 
where the Westminster Confession of Faith was the 
doctrinal standard. In most of the Northern States New- 
School sentiments, as above represented, had come ex- 
tensively to prevail, greatly to the dissatisfaction of a 
majority of the Church. The result was that, in 1837-8 
the Presbyterian Church of America divided. How this 
was brought about and what the immediate results were, 
it is not necessary here to explain. 

The fact to be chiefly noted is, that the liberalizing 
process went on, creeds became less sacred and were, 
by all parties, taken less literally, until about thirty years 
later, the two General Assemblies of the Presbyterian 
Church of America were again happily united. They 
still hold to the Westminster Confession, but now, by a 
sort of mutual understanding, not literally, but "for sub- 
stance of doctrine." This concession, made informally, 
was a great step in advance of former positions. But 
the finality is not yet reached. The time is coming, and 
is probably near at hand, when long-draw r n-out meta- 
physical Creeds, as standards of authority, will have had 
their day and will fall into general disuse. Professor 
Briggs, in a recently published article, after showing how 
the Westminster Confession was made two hundred and 
fifty years ago, predicts the end of its authority as a 
practical standard of faith and discipline in the Church, 
as follows : 

"The Westminster standards have been rejected by all 
but Presbyterians. They are now distasteful to a large 



2l6 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



and increasing number of Presbyterians. They will soon 

be discarded in Great Britain and America 

The next step in Presbyterianism will inevitably be the 
preparation of a short and simple creed, unless they 
come to the opinion that the Apostle's Creed is better 

than any they can make in our times The 

forms of Presbyterianism have been preserved in the 
American Presbyterian churches ; but the spirit of Pres- 
byterianism and its substance as held by the Westminster 
Divines, has, in large measure departed. It is a ques- 
tion how long the form will maintain itself without the 
substance and without the spirit. No one can intelli- 
gently study the Westminster Assembly and its docu- 
ments in their historic setting without seeing that the 
Presbyterian Church has drifted so far from them that 
it is an inconsistent 1 and, indeed, an untenable situation. 
It must react to the original historic position of the 
Westminster standards, or it must throw over the stand- 
ards and make new standards which really express the 
worship, doctrine, polity and discipline of the Presby- 
terians of our day." 

This quotation from Dr. Briggs expresses substan- 
tially the condition and need of nearly all the Churches, 
no less than of the Presbyterian, with which he is or 
was then connected. 

The outline I have given of one section of a great con- 
troversy, and, to some extent strife, coming down to 
recent date, is for a purpose. It is not intended to "rake 
open the fires that were smothered/' but to illustrate the 
spirit and progress of the present age; and, also, to 
suggest that the end is not yet reached. Greater changes 
than have taken place are unavoidable in the not distant 
future. Even now, Christian men of evangelical stand- 



THE CREEDAL VIEW MODIFIED. 



217 



ing may and do hold opinions, on many important theo- 
logical questions, in opposition to all the historic Creeds, 
and publicly advocate them ; and this, without losing 
caste or standing in the Churches where they belong. 
This is true of many distinguished ministers who hold 
and teach, in one form or another, the doctrine of final 
restoration, or of conditional immortality. I must be- 
lieve that the doctrine of eternal punishment, as it is in 
the Creeds, and as it has been preached, but as I might 
almost say is preached no more, is doomed to pass away 
entirely, or to be greatly changed. The whole present 
drift of thought is in that direction. If the Creeds go, 
that doctrine must go with them, for the Creed is its 
main support. The Fatherhood and love of God, as 
now accepted, make this a necessity. The Gospel of eter- 
nal hope will replace that of eternal despair, and will be 
a great inspiration to the churches and an encourage- 
ment to all mankind. 

The Church of the future — as regards what it shall 
hold and emphasize as most important, and as to methods 
of work — will be greatly different from the Church of 
the past. Her moral power will be far greater, and she 
will move along widely different lines. Tradition, au- 
thority and excitement will give place to reason and 
sober judgment; and the old antagonisms among 
thoughtful people in the Church and out of it, will have 
passed away; and the result will be a general religious 
awakening and an in-gathering of the people of all 
classes into the Church. There will come an extensive 
revision of existing doctrinal beliefs, in which a fuller 
knowledge of human relations, of man's earthly life, as 
related to the spirit life beyond, and, especially of man's 
relations to God, will come more fully into view, and 



2l8 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



hold, over the hearts and lives of men, that controlling 
influence to which they are entitled. In this revisal the 
old theory of eternal misery, inflicted by the direct hand 
of God apart from the law of natural consequences, will 
be discarded or become obsolete. Then the Christian 
world will have entered upon a new and mighty move- 
ment that shall reach every land and people ; and, at no 
distant day extend and establish the Kingdom of God 
on earth as it is in heaven. 



ETERNAL HOPE, HOW MAINTAINED. 



219 



CHAPTER XV. 

ETERNAL HOPE, HOW MAINTAINED IN THE 
PROBLEM. 

Hope is the opposite of despair; one excludes the 
other. A belief that the great proportion of the human 
family who have lived, or are now living upon the earth, 
are to be eternally miserable is the doctrine of despair, 
against which the soul of every thoughtful man in- 
stinctively and necessarily revolts. Difficulties and ob- 
jections arise and force themselves upon every sane mind. 
For one to say that he sees and feels no such difficulties 
and objections is to confess that he has never thought 
upon the subject; is to confess himself to be a child 
who believes without thinking, or else one who cares 
more for tradition than for truth, for creeds than for 
conscience, for authority than for reason. 

The greatest practical objection that can be brought 
against the doctrine of endless punishment is, that, like 
a serpent it winds itself around the human heart, and 
crushes out the main-spring of Eternal Hope. In pro- 
portion as this objection is recognized and felt, and yet 
is not followed and examined, but stifled and resisted, 
Hope dies ; and with it the Spring and possibility of 
earnest Christian endeavor for the saving of the world. 
The sources of inspiration and of earnest endeavor in the 
human soul are hope, faith, truth and God; or it is all 
the same if they are taken in the reverse order. Let a 



220 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



sense of serious doubt upon any subject enter into one's 
heart and mind and one's power of sustained action upon 
that subject is gone. Pluck the quills from the eagle's 
wing and he descends to the ground. Man's doubts are 
the plucked quills of the eagle that bring him down from 
his soarings. His wing of hope is broken, and he falls. 

To analyze : Hope is the Spring of endeavor ; take that 
away and energy fails, strength is paralyzed. We are 
saved by hope. But hope is not a thing by itself, is 
not independent. Hope is the child of faith, and leans 
ever on its mother's bosom, more smiling, but less 
thoughtful. If there be no faith there is no hope. But 
faith, again, is not an independent virtue. It must have 
truth for its pedestal. A faith that does not rest on truth 
is false and delusive ; so that doubts in regard to truth 
weaken faith, which, in turn, paralyzes hope, and which, 
again, destroys endeavor. But we have not yet reached 
the ultimate. Truth is not a thing apart by itself any 
more than are hope and faith, but is an emanation from 
God, so that to doubt as to truth is to doubt God. God is 
underneath the whole superstructure of truth, which up- 
holds faith, of faith that supports hope, and of hope that is 
essential to earnest, successful endeavor. Men will work 
on while hope endures ; take that away and further effort 
ceases. 

The relation of hope to endeavor may be best seen in 
the light of illustrations : Multitudes of eager men are 
rushing to the Klondyke in pursuit of gold. They brave 
every peril and hardship because hope inspires and sus- 
tains them. They have both desire and expectation ; and 
this urges them forward. If, in the course of time hope 
shall weaken and discouragement take its place, then 
effort will cease. Some years ago all France, under what 



ETERNAL HOPE, HOW MAINTAINED. 



221 



was considered great leadership, was full of energy and 
action in the work of constructing the Panama Ship 
Canal across the Isthmus. They put millions of money 
and thousands of lives into it ; while the people were 
sustained by hope, gold flowed in like water. At last 
hope failed, and at once the work ceased. Recently the 
people of Greece were as eager for war with Turkey as 
blood-hounds are to be let loose for the chase. They had 
high hopes. After several unexpected defeats hope 
failed and turned to despair. Then they were driven 
like flocks of sheep chased by dogs. In our own Civil 
War the rebellion was resistless while hope endured ; 
but, as hope gave way courage weakened, and, at length, 
the Confederates surrendered without a battle. The 
Spaniards, in the war just ended, are another fresh 
example. 

These illustrations of the power of hope in the busi- 
ness world apply equally in the department of religion. 
Glance at the first century of the Christian era. Those 
early disciples believed in Christ, and what He, said and 
did and was. This faith inspired their hope, and hope 
enkindled zeal and energetic endeavor to bring the world 
into an experience of divine life corresponding to their 
own. With what self-surrender, self-sacrifice and utter 
consecration did such men as Paul give themselves to 
the missionary work whereunto they were called. And 
what mighty results, by the blessing of God, attended 
their labors. 

Glance into what are known as the dark centuries of 
Christian history and what do we see? The Apostolic 
spirit and zeal have departed, hope languishes, faith rests 
on dead form, not on living truth ; God, as Christ re- 
vealed Him, is obscured, and so earnest endeavor for 



222 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

the saving of the world gives place to contention, super- 
stition, worldliness and spiritual death. 

At length Luther appears; the Reformation dawns, 
God in Christ comes into view, the Bible is resurrected, 
faith returns, hope revives, and what splendid energies 
are put forth, and with what grand results ! 

In the early part of this century the great missionary 
enterprises, Home and Foreign, which have been one 
glory of the century, were inaugurated. The enthusiasm 
connected with those movements, and with the meetings 
and reports of the Boards that conducted them, was 
deep, universal and memorable. Since then the member- 
ship of our churches has many times doubled, wealth 
in Christian hands has increased beyond all precedent; 
every facility for Christian work has multiplied ten-fold ; 
yet where are we to-day in relation to missionary work? 
and, as regards enthusiastic effort for evangelization at 
home and abroad? Let our depleted treasuries, our cur- 
tailments here and there, let the coldness that generally 
prevails in church life, let the drifting of men away from 
the churches, let the feeling of uncertainty, of doubt, of 
misgiving, if not of indifference, that so generally pre- 
vails, — let these things answer. 

Nothing is more certain than that a large and intelli- 
gent section of the Christian Church, and of people out 
of the churches, are in an attitude of doubt, of protest 
and of unbelief in regard to measures and doctrines that 
were once unquestioned. The religious world is at the 
opening of a transition period which, when reached, will 
awaken new hope and energy and make the Gosepl of 
Christ resistless. But just now hope languishes. 

I am convinced that doctrinal difficulties have much 
to do with the existing state of things ; and the one doc- 



ETERNAL HOPE, HOW MAINTAINED. 223 

trine which more than any other now meets with dis- 
trust and unbelief is the doctrine of eternal punishment 
for most of the moral beings now living or who have ever 
lived on the face of the earth. Does the great part of the 
Christian world, in its heart, believe that doctrine? If 
Christians did — to repeat a stale thought — would they not 
run crazy? or, if there exists some way of escape from 
such a doom through Christ, would they not be as 
earnest to lead a lost world to Him as they are to ex- 
tinguish a fire, or to save the drowning crew of a wrecked 
ship? It could not be otherwise. 

Think of what this doctrine of eternal punishment is, 
as written in the creeds and sometimes preached from 
pulpits, listened to and accepted by the people with as 
little apparent emotion as if they were hearing some 
pleasant narrative of foreign travel. Men can be made 
to believe strange things under skillful leadership ; but 
this doctrine is too fearful to be generally accepted with- 
out protest. The objections which were felt and urged 
by the few long ago, are now pressing upon the hearts of 
many who do not care to make avowal on the subject. 

It will be the further purpose of this chapter to show, 
largely by quotation, how earnest people have sought 
to inspire Eternal Hope and escape Despair by bringing 
objections to that destroyer of Hope, the Creedal doc- 
trine of endless punishment. 

(i) That the doctrine of endless punishment, as found 
in the Creeds and sometimes preached and accepted as- 
true, is dishonorable to God and unjust to man. It in- 
volves a violation of those intuitive principles of right, 
honor and justice which have been already stated and 
found to be equally binding on God and man, and which 
constitute the standard of final appeal. This is claimed ; 



224 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

and, if the point is well taken, the objection is un- 
answerable and fatal to the doctrine, as it would be to 
any doctrine that puts dishonor upon God. It is an 
argument that lies within the comprehension of all men ; 
and each person may pass judgment for himself. The 
question is : Could God honorably create a race of moral 
beings and condition their existence as man's existence 
is said to be conditioned, and then, for the lack of perfect 
moral character, and for the first failure, doom them to 
eternal misery, to eternal separation from His own love 
and favor? Could God honorably do all this? 

(2) A second way of escape is, that the penalty for sin 
is not eternal misery which makes existence a curse, 
but that it consists in the loss of well-being. Sin weakens 
the mind, lessens its capacity for happiness, brings the 
sinner under condemnation and inflicts the penalty, not 
of hopeless and utter misery, but of great mental and 
spiritual loss. This appears to have been the opinion 
of Augustine, whom Roman Catholics and Protestants 
alike honor as the great and most trusted teacher of the 
early Christian centuries. I quote from "Bronson's 
Quarterly Review/' a reliable authority on such a sub- 
ject : 

"In Augustine's view," says the writer, "Eternal Death 
is a subsidence into a lower form of life, a lapse into an 
inferior mode of existence, a privation of the highest 
vital influx from God in order to everlasting life or 
supreme beatitude, but not of all vital influx, in order 
to an endless existence, which is a partial and incomplete 
participation in good." 

He says again : "However great their sufferings from 
the pain of loss, or the pain of sense may be, it cannot be 
such throughout eternity as to destroy the good of exist- 



ETERNAL HOPE, HOW MAINTAINED. 



225 



ence and make it a pure, unmitigated, penal evil to live 
forever/' 

Such a view of future punishment from such a source, 
so at variance with the commonly accepted opinion, 
ought to have great weight with thoughtful minds ; es- 
pecially when we consider that Origen, and other theo- 
logians of the early centuries, appear to have held sub- 
stantially the same view. 

(3) A third method of escape and of hope comes 
through what is known as the moral argument against 
eternal punishment. This view cuts the knot by simply 
declaring that it cannot be true. I shall let two repre- 
sentative men give their thoughts on this question. The 
first is John Foster, than whom no man stood higher in 
the English nation for intelligence, genius and Christian 
character. After a long struggle he was forced to ex- 
press himself as follows : He begins with describing 
eternity, the actual condition of the human race, the 
character of God and the awful nature of eternal punish- 
ment, as a positive infliction, which he calls a "lurid and 
dreadful shade" on God's system of economy ; and then 
says : 

"It would be a transcendently direful contemplation 
if I believed the doctrine of the eternity of future misery. 
It amazes me to imagine how thoughtful and benevolent 
men, believing that doctrine, can endure the sight of 
the present world and the history of the past. To behold 
successive, innumerable crowds carried on in the mighty 
impulse of depraved nature which they are impotent to 
reverse and to which it is not the will of God. in His 
sovereignty, to apply the only adequate power, the with- 
holding of which consigns them inevitably to their doom, 
— too see them passing through a short term of exist- 



226 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

ence (absurdly, sometimes, denominated probation) 
under all the world's pernicious influences, with the ad- 
dition of the malign and deadly one of the great tempter 
and destroyer, to confirm and augment the inherent de- 
pravity on their speedy passage to everlasting woe, — I 
repeat, I am, without pretending to any extraordinary 
depth of feeling, amazed to conceive what they contrive 
to do with their sensibility, and in what manner they 
maintain a firm assurance of the Divine goodness and 
justice." 

This quotation is sufficient, although there is much 
more of the same sort. Mr. Foster says : "A number 
(not large, but of great piety and intelligence) of minis- 
ters within my acquaintance have been disbelievers of 
the doctrine in question, at the same time not feeling 
themselves called upon to make a public disavowal/' 

The second honored name to bear testimony under 
this head is Dr. Channing, who represents the Liberal 
School, as Foster does the Orthodox. 

Dr. Channing says : "If I and my beloved friends and 
my whole race have come from the hands of our Creator 
wholly depraved, irresistibly propense to all evil and 
averse to all good, — if only a portion are chosen to escape 
from this miserable state, and if the rest are to be con- 
signed by the Being who gave us our depraved and 
wretched nature to endless torments in inextinguish- 
able flames, — then, I do think that nothing remains but 
to mourn in anguish of heart; then existence is a curse 
and the Creator is, — O my merciful Father! I cannot 
speak of Thee in the language which this system would 
suggest. No ! Thou hast been too kind to me to deserve 
this reproach at my lips." 

Again, he writes : "We can endure any errors but those 



ETERNAL HOPE, HOW MAINTAINED. 227 

which subvert or unsettle the conception of God's pater- 
nal goodness. Urge not upon us a system which makes 
existence a curse and wraps the universe in gloom !" 

An able writer of the Universalist order applies the 
same argument as follows : 

"No intelligent person of this era could bow to the 
authority of Jesus if He taught the Ptolemaic astronomy, 
or if He affirmed the Platonic cosmogony. Even so the 
conception which I hold of the universe and its Author, 
of man as the child of God, of the meaning of the human 
creation, of the divine Fatherhood, which Jesus has more 
fully revealed than all others, makes it as impossible for 
me to accept the orthodox traditional teaching on the 
subject of the final issue of Christianity, on any authority, 
as it would be to accept mediaeval science on any 
authority." 

This method of putting and supporting the moral argu- 
ment against eternal punishment has been often stated 
and calls for no comment. It is to be taken for what it is. 

(4) A fourth door opened for escape from the hope- 
destroying doctrine is that of Final Restoration. If we 
could believe that the sin and misery of the lost would 
somewhere end, and that all mankind would finally be 
restored to holiness and eternal blessedness, then we 
should know that God is not against His children, but. 
in mysterious ways, is seeking their highest good. 

The argument for Final Restitution is supported from 
moral reason, but chiefly from the New Testament. Such 
passages as these are most frequently quoted : "For this 
purpose the Son of God was manifested that He might 
destroy the works of the devil." "He must reign till He 
hath put all enemies under His feet." 

It would seem from passages like these, and I give 



228 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



only two out of many, that Christ became incarnate for 
the purpose of destroying sin and establishing universal 
purity and peace ; and when this is done, not sooner, then 
cometh The End. Only the line of argument is here 
suggested. 

(5) A fifth way of escape is found in the doctrine of 
Universal Salvation ; and this, in the Universalist and 
Unitarian churches of to-day takes on the form just re- 
ferred to, of final restitution. It is not contended now, 
as it was once by the elder Ballou, that all punishment 
ends at death, but only that it is not eternal. 

Universalism of a peculiar type was introduced into 
this country more than a hundred years ago by Rev. 
John Murray, who had been associated with both Wesley 
and Whitefield in evangelistic work. His universalism 
was a logical necessity from the doctrine of general 
atonement as against that of limited atonement. Ortho- 
doxy conceded that all for whom Christ died would be 
saved but held that He died only for the elect. Murray 
insisted that Christ died for all the world that "He tasted 
death for every man" and for each alike ; and that there- 
fore on the Orthodox admission all men would be saved. 
So far as I can see his argument assuming the Orthodox 
theory that all would be saved for whom Christ died, is 
conclusive. 

(6) A sixth door of escape is that of Conditional Immor- 
tality, which was considered in the chapter on Immortal 
Life in the Problem. In this connection, therefore, it is 
only needful to say that the theory of Conditional Im- 
mortality is simply a rebound from the doctrine of eter- 
nal punishment. That doctrine was felt to be so dis- 
heartening and destructive of hope, and so to earnest 
Christian effort, that, in some way its horrors must be 



ETERNAL HOPE, HOW MAINTAINED. 



229 



escaped ; and conditional immortality was seized upon 
as a way of relief. Dreadful as is the thought of annihila- 
tion, it is yet a great deliverance against the more dread- 
ful thought of eternal punishment; and, for that reason 
chiefly, as I think, it has been formulated and defended. 

(7) A seventh way of escape is found in the theory of 
what is called Greater Hope. This is a new hypothesis, 
supported mainly by Evangelical Christians, who felt 
that some relief from the old creedal doctrine was neces- 
sary ; and yet, who could not accept any of the preceding 
theories. The idea took form in connection with foreign 
missionary work. The old view doomed every human 
soul, in pagan and Christian lands alike, that did not be- 
lieve in Christ as a personal Saviour to eternal perdition. 
This new theory excepts a certain class of persons who 
may be trying to find the truth, but have had no such 
knowledge of Christ as to make intelligent faith a possi- 
bility. Such persons, it is claimed, may have the oppor- 
tunity of knowing and accepting Christ in the life after 
death. This view, with more or less of latitude, appears- 
to be held by many leading clergymen and theological 
professors ; and it came near, at one time, — through 
strenuous opposition to the commissioning of mission- 
aries holding the Greater Hope theory to the foreign 
field, — splitting asunder one of our oldest and most effi- 
cient foreign missionary societies. The fact that the new- 
view is no longer held as a bar to missionary appoint- 
ment abroad, or to pastoral service at home, shows to 
what extent the idea prevails in Orthodox connections. 

The great conservative objection to this theory is, that 
if admitted it logically opens the door to all who shall 
not have accepted Christ as their Saviour in this life, to 



23O THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

such an acceptance in the life beyond. One step, it is 
said, leads to the other. 

That such is the natural if not inevitable logic of the 
situation is probable. To say the least, this latest theory 
shows that intelligent Christians in Orthodox Churches 
are depressed in spirit by the old doctrine, and are seek- 
ing relief as necessary to the inspiration of hopeful en- 
deavor. 

(8) Omitting from this chapter the argument from 
natural consequences, the eighth and last way of escape 
from the discouraging doctrine of eternal punishment 
is to shut one's eyes and ignore the whole subject. John 
Foster, as we have seen, tells us that in his day he knew 
of learned and pious ministers who held the radical view 
which he himself advocated, while yet they did not feel 
themselves called upon to avow their convictions. It is 
claimed by those who profess to know, that the number 
of clergymen, not to say of laymen, who, at this time, are 
thus "hiding their light under a bushel/' is very large. 
However this may be, two things are certain. One is 
that the amount and character of preaching on the sub- 
ject of eternal punishment at the present day bears no 
comparison with that of one hundred, or even fifty or 
twenty-five years ago ; and when it is preached, it is for 
the most part done in a sort of apologetic and hesitating, 
qualifying way, wholly unknown to the fathers of living 
men. "Thereto hangs a tale." 

The other fact is that the number of clergymen who 
adopt and publicly advocate views opposed to the Creedal 
doctrine of eternal punishment, and, also, that the num- 
ber of hitherto conservative churches that do not now re- 
gard such views as a bar to the pastorate, is large, and 
is constantly increasing. It would be easy to give a long 



ETERNAL HOPE, HOW MAINTAINED. 



231 



list of names of distinguished living men, and of others 
who have just passed away, all belonging to Orthodox 
churches of different denominations, who stand, not 
offensively, but openly in opposition to the doctrine of 
eternal punishment, as a positive infliction, apart from 
natural consequences. They are found in every Chris- 
tian country, and their number is enlarging. 

This great change in public sentiment is to be ex- 
plained on two grounds : First, changed views in respect 
to the character and purpose of God, and of His rela- 
tions to mankind. God has come to be to the Christian 
heart and to the Christian Church, a God of love. Christ 
has revealed the Father to us, not as a God of terror, but 
of infinite tenderness, whose heart and sympathies are 
now and eternally for, and not against the human race, 
and for every individual of it. This view over against 
creedal representations assures, if it does not necessitate 
a change of position on the subject of eternal punish- 
ment. It is the new point of view. 

A second and more practical reason for the great 
change now going on is that the old theory is depressive 
to rational hope, and so to earnest, persistent endeavor. 
I have known Christian ministers foolishly to say that, if 
the doctrine of eternal punishment is not true, then they 
would do nothing more for the support of foreign mis- 
sions, or for the conversion of the world ; as if a belief 
that the great proportion of all the people now living, 
and most of the countless multitudes of moral agents who 
have lived and died are doomed to eternal misery, were 
an inspiration to Christian hope and endeavor ! Instead 
of that, is it not, to thoughtful people the most hopeless 
and depressing view conceivable. 

Salvation does not consist in escape from an eternal 



232 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



hell, but in preparation for eternal blessedness. It is 
deliverance from the bondage of selfishness and entrance 
into the divine life that Christ Himself enjoyed. This 
was why the Gospel was brought to men and why it 
should be preached. The Gospel is no negative system, 
seeking after a negative salvation; but a positive one, 
seeking to bring every man into the image of the Son of 
God. A belief that it will yet, by the grace of God, do 
this for every one who bears the Divine image, to the 
extent to which each moral being shall be found capable 
of receiving it, should inspire confidence, inflame hope, 
and so prompt to the most energetic efforts of which 
man is capable. 

At the opening of this chapter it was seen that the 
rational hope of success in any department of life was 
conditional upon confidence. Take that away and hope 
dies. After that, dead form may continue, but living 
energy has gone out of it, so that nothing is left but a 
corpse without a spirit. 

There must be some practical modification of the old 
creed on the subject of future punishment and the 
dogmas that lead to it, or, for aught I can see, the Chris- 
tian faith must lose and continue to lose its hold upon 
thinking, intelligent men. Almost everything thinkable 
except metaphysical creeds has been revised and revo- 
lutionized, most of them over and over again in the last 
fifteen hundred yeors. But the creeds, with slight 
changes, remain the same, as if they were too sacred to 
be examined in the light of the XIX Century. That 
examination has now happily commenced, and it is likely 
to go on, whoever may oppose, until the creeds come out 
from the shades of credulity and metaphysical specu- 
lation, where they originated, into the clearer and more 



ETERNAL HOPE, HOW MAINTAINED. 



233 



scientific and spiritual light that now irradiates these 
questions. When that revision is made and accepted in 
the pulpit and in the pew, I anticipate that the Gospel, 
as preached, will commend itself to every man's con- 
science in the sight of God; that doubts will disappear, 
that confidence will be restored, that hope will revive, 
and that religion will take on such a movement God- 
ward and heavenward as has never yet been witnessed. 
But, if hope is crushed religion dies. "We are saved by 
hope." 

The one serious obstacle that the conclusion toward 
which the present study seems to tend and which has to 
be encountered, is found in what Christ Himself declared 
on the subject of future punishment. This is the strong 
hold of the doctrine; and our Lord's words are not to 
be contradicted, nor subjected to an unnatural and forced 
interpretation. They must be left to mean what He in- 
tended to teach and no more. A study of Christ's words 
on the subject of future punishment in the problem of 
Final Destiny will, therefore, be the subject of the next 
chapter. 



234 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

CHRIST'S WORDS ON FUTURE PUNISHMENT 
IN THE PROBLEM. 

A well-known and honored clergyman of New Eng- 
land, conversing recently with a friend on the question 
of eternal punishment, said : "That he saw and felt deeply 
the difficulties and embarrassments in which the doctrine 
is involved ; and that he would gladly accept some con- 
clusion of final restoration, were it not that the words 
of Christ on the subject of future punishment were so 
definite and conclusive as to compel adherence to the 
old doctrine, however urgent other reasons might be 
against it." 

These words, I believe, voice the sentiment and feeling 
upon this subject of most open-minded and thoughtful 
Christian men. The great topic now to be studied is the 
Biblical view of future punishment. There are two 
methods of studying a grave question like this : One is 
what may be called the microscopic and the other the 
telescopic method. The microscopic method consists in 
taking up, one by one, every text of the Bible that seems 
to have any relation to the subject, and, by minute criti- 
cal examination try to find in each word some concealed 
meaning that may be brought out in support of one side 
or the other. The commentator is obliged, more or 
less, to adopt this method. But I have come to look with 
suspicion upon any doctrine in theology or morals that 



Christ's words ox future punishment. 235 

is developed and defended in this way. The central 
truths of the Bible do not have to be discovered; they 
disclose themselves; they are as deep rivers and lofty 
mountain ranges that stretch across continents, and 
microscopes are not needed for their discovery. The 
existence and character of God, the sinfulness and misery 
of men, the great doctrine of redemption through Christ, 
and Christ Himself, the fact of continued life after death, 
and the causal connection of righteousness and blessed- 
ness, and of sin and misery in this world and beyond ; — 
these are among the great truths of the Bible that "he 
who runs may read/' 

The telescopic method of investigation passes over 
small things, and small ways of studying great subjects, 
and fixes attention upon central questions and the 
obvious underlying facts and principles that give them 
support. The moral firmament, with its suns and satel- 
lites, are its field of vision. 

After this method let us approach and study the great 
Biblical question of eternal punishment. We have seen 
that the doctrine will stand or fall chiefly in the light of 
what Christ Himself has spoken concerning it. True, 
the apostles have spoken also ; but their words and figures 
of speech are but the echoes of Christ's voice ; and they 
have authority chiefly as Christ imparts it to them. Let 
us find what Christ has actually revealed on the subject, 
and all else must revolve around Him, as the planets do 
around the sun. 

Our field of study may, with safety and advantage, be 
still further narrowed. We may take our Lord's fullest 
and most impressive utterance upon the subject of eter- 
nal punishment, and, if that utterance, in view of all the 
accompanying facts, unmistakably supports the doctrine, 



236 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



then, without further controversy it is to be accepted. 
On the contrary, if a careful and candid study brings the 
meaning of His teaching, and so the doctrine itself into 
serious doubt, then no other considerations can estab- 
lish it. 

The crucial point, both for defence and attack, is our 
Lord's statement contained in the twenty-fifth chapter of 
Matthew, from the thirty-first to the forty-sixth verse. 
It reads as follows : 

"When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and 
all the angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne 
of His glory; and before Him shall be gathered all na- 
tions ; and He shall separate them one from another, as 
a shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats ; and He 
shall set the sheep on His right hand and the goats on 
His left. Then shall the king say unto them on His 
right hand : 'Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the 
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the 
world ; for I was an hungered and ye gave me meat ; I 
was thirsty and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger and 
ye took Me in ; naked and ye clothed Me ; I was sick 
and ye visited Me ; I was in prison and ye came unto 
Me.' Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying: 
'Lord, when saw we Thee an hungered and fed Thee? 
or athirst and gave Thee drink? And when saw we 
Thee a stranger and took Thee in? or naked and clothed 
Thee? And when saw we Thee sick and in prison and 
came unto Thee?' And the King shall answer and say 
unto them : 'Verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did 
it unto one of these My brethren, even these least, ye 
did it unto Me/ " 

"Then shall He say also unto them on His left hand : 
'Depart from Me, ye cursed, into eternal fire prepared 



Christ's words ox future punishment. 237 

for the devil and his angels ; for I was an hungered and 
ye gave Me no meat ; I was thirsty and ye gave Me no 
drink ; I was a stranger and ye took Me not in ; naked 
and ye clothed Me not ; sick and in prison and ye visited 
Me not/ Then shall they also answer, saying: 'Lord, 
when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, 
or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto 
Thee? Then shall He answer them, saying: 'Verily, I 
say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these 
least, ye did it not unto me/ And these shall go away 
into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal 
life." 

This apparent and spectacular description of the 
general judgment and its consequences, is the strategic 
point, the citadel of defence for all who hold to the doc- 
trine of eternal punishment. Thoughtful readers of his- 
tory know that the issues of great international wars 
usually turn on some one decisive battle that decides the 
fate of empires and changes the map of the world. The 
battle of Marathon is a familiar illustration. The capture 
of Quebec took North America from the French and 
gave it to the English. The victory of the Americans 
over Burgoyne at Saratoga made the British Colonies 
free States. The fall of Vicksburg necessitated the fall 
of the Confederacy. 

In the religious world, moral conflicts have turned on 
some one great issue. On the coming and crucifixion of 
Christ, turned the destiny of the world. Martin Luther's 
theses nailed on the church door at Wittenburg rent 
the Papal Church in twain, and established Protestant- 
ism. On the same general principle, Christ's words on 
future punishment in the account just quoted, form the 
moral battle-ground upon which the question of eternal 



238 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

punishment is to be settled. The real question at issue 
here is not as to whether the doctrine of endless punish- 
ment is true or false ; nor is it whether or not the twenty- 
fifth chapter of Matthew is susceptible of an interpretation 
which favors that doctrine. It is as to whether Christ's 
words as here reported do necessarily support that doc- 
trine ; for, if there shall be found good ground for rational 
doubt, and strong probability against that interpreta- 
tion, and in favor of the conclusion that the words were, 
or may have been, spoken for some other purpose than 
that of teaching endless punishment, then that doctrine 
is not here established, and should not therefore be 
accepted, especially with all the antecedent probabilities 
that lie against it. 

Upon four points there is general agreement: 1. That 
all men are to be judged. 2. That the crucial test in 
judgment is moral character. 3. That reward and pen- 
alty extend into the future life. 4. That so long as sin 
continues penalty will endure. 

The points upon which Christian people differ, are : 
1. As to whether the forgiving and saving mercy of God 
extends, through Christ, into the future life. 2. As to 
whether or not penalty, — in the sense of positive inflic- 
tion apart from natural consequences, making the exist- 
ence of moral beings a curse and not a blessing, — is to 
continue endlessly. 

The first of these questions was considered in the chap- 
ter on the Intermediate State. As for the second, it must 
be answered, if answered intelligently, not by simple, 
direct exegesis, but in the light of underlying, accom- 
panying and cumulative facts and principles that have 
much to do, and must have, with the settlement of this 
main question. The facts and principles to be considered 



Christ's words on future punishment. 239 

as throwing light upon the whole question of probability 
are such as these : 

1. Facts brought out by recent Biblical and theological 
criticisms have modified, if not changed many con- 
clusions that once were supposed to be finally settled. 
The Bible is now seen to have a much larger human ele- 
ment in its composition than it was once thought to con- 
tain. It is no longer looked upon, in the strictly ideal 
sense, as an inerrant Book. This does not mean that 
the Bible has lost anything of its intrinsic value ; but 
that its authority on many questions is not as broad 
and absolute as it once was thought to be. The Bible 
was written for the people whom it immediately ad- 
dressed; its statements were more or less modified by 
prevailing ideas, and it was never intended to be so far 
in advance of average intelligence as to be incomprehen- 
sible, and so useless to those for whom it was imme- 
diately written. We know this to be true in regard to 
science, both physical and ethical; and, in some degree 
it must be true of all questions that lie on the border-land 
of human comprehension. The light it first sheds upon 
such subjects is shadowy, and then it increases as time 
rolls on, and the minds of men are able to receive it. For 
what is called revelation to go beyond this would not be 
revelation but mystery; and it is certain that the Bible 
is written, not on the plan of stating the whole truth at 
once, but such portions of it, from time to time, as men 
are able to understand and utilize. In a word, the Bible 
is throughout a progressive Book. 

Since the completion of the Bible, and, as I believe, 
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, our conceptions 
and knowledge of God, and of what we call the govern- 
ment of God, have been greatly clarified and enlarged. 



240 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

The mission of God's Spirit, as the Teacher and Inspirer 
of men, did not cease when the Bible was completed, 
but is ever in the world revealing God and His truth 
to those who seek Him, and more and more as the cen- 
turies advance. 

The initial truth of the whole Bible is written in its first 
words : In the beginning — God. Out of this one word all 
religious truth and true religion are evolved. There were 
a few great, inspired souls in Old Testament times 
who lived actually in the light of the New Dispensation, 
just as there are Christian people to-day who live among 
the types and shadows of the Old Testament age. As 
the Old Testament was the initial revelation for the 
New, so the New was initial, and only that, to the whole 
dispensation which it inaugurated. It opened up en- 
larged and inspiring views of God, revealing Him as a 
loving Father who sent His Son to seek and save His 
lost children. It raised questions that it did not answer. 
Just as the Old Testament was not a finality, so the New 
Testament holds an advanced, but not terminal place in 
the world's search after God. It started inquiries that 
after ages, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, were to pursue 
and solve. 

Sabatier, in his "Philosophy of Religion/' says : "It is 
against all analogy that the fullness of perfection should 
be met with at the outset of any evolution whatsoever; 
those who place it at the origin of Christianity are vic- 
tims of the same illusion as the ancients who placed the 
Golden Age at the beginning of human history." 

This Nineteenth Century has been one of great in- 
tellectual and spiritual enlightenment. Our ideas are 
assuming new forms. Not only are God and man seen 
in a new light, but the government of God, physical and 



Christ's words on future punishment. 241 

moral, is found to be, not the anti-type of human gov- 
ernments, but the Divinely appointed order of nature; 
and this order of nature, or government of God, is 
in no danger of being overthrown, even as the honor of 
God is in no danger of being dimmed. We are coming 
to see that God's laws are self-protective, that penalty is 
the natural and necessary consequence of wrong-doing, 
and is inflicted more for disciplinary reasons than to 
satisfy abstract justice, and is never administered in the 
spirit of hatred and revenge, but always in love. 

These enlarged conceptions of the Bible, of God our 
Father, of the law of love, and of the meaning and pur- 
pose of penalty must modify traditional interpretations 
of those texts that speak of God as wrathful, and of 
punishment as a lake of fire, a place where wailing and 
gnashing of teeth shall endure forever. We must inter- 
pret such passages in the light of moral intuitions, in the 
light of another and different class of texts with which 
the Scriptures abound, and in the light also of new reve- 
lations from God that are fast taking possession of the 
thoughts and hearts of men ; and we must put upon those 
awful texts, including that in the last of Matt. 25, the 
mildest and not the severest meaning which, in view of 
all the circumstances they are able to bear. We must 
emphasize the noun punishment rather than the adjective 
eternal. 

2. A second accompanying fact to be considered is, 
that we are uncertain as to what Christ's exact words 
were on the occasion of His supposed announcement 
of general judgment. We are not certain that, at any 
point in the Gospels we have Christ's exact words, all 
of them, and in just the order in which they were spoken. 
In many cases, two, and sometimes three, and even all four 



242 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



of the evangelists report and seem to quote Christ's exact 
words spoken on given occasions ; but no two accounts 
agree as to what His exact words were. If anywhere, 
we should expect that Christ's exact words would be 
given in the formula by which He instituted the com- 
memoration of His own death in the Lord's Supper. We 
have four accounts of what He said on that great occa- 
sion, each one repeating His exact words ; and yet no 
two of them agree. Not long ago, an Episcopal clergy- 
man, speaking to a gathering of ministers, on the Lam- 
beth Platform, insisted that, as one condition of possible 
church union, all churches, in the celebration of the 
Lord's Supper, must agree to use the exact words that 
Christ spoke when He instituted the ordinance. One 
hearer could not resist the temptation of asking which of 
the four differing reports of His last exact words must 
we feel ourselves obligated to use. It seemed to strike 
the good man as a strange question, but He did not 
answer it. 

The order of Christ's sayings is nowhere preserved. 
The Gospels are not only fragmentary, but they contain 
only a very small part of what Christ actually spoke to 
the people of His day. All this must be remembered 
by those who undertake to form His words into dogma. 

Often when I read an elaborate exegesis of some saying 
of Christ, the whole force of which turns upon some 
one word, I say to myself, What, if after all, as is very 
likely, Christ never used that exact word at all. The 
Evangelists give in their own language what they relate, 
from such information as they had, and understood to 
be His meaning. Doubtless they were, for substance, 
generally correct ; but who can say that their reports 
were not at times, unconsciously shaded by their own 



Christ's words ox future punishment. 243 

thoughts upon the same subject, or by partial misap- 
prehension? This is most natural and probable. Saba- 
tier, again, says : 

"It seems to me impossible to deny that in the teach- 
ings of Jesus there are parts which are uncertain, things 
that have either been badly understood or badly re- 
ported ; and oriental and contingent form which needs to 
be translated into our modern languages. Who does 
not see that neither in His language nor in His thoughts 
there is anything absolute. Both of them are constantly 
determined by the generally received ideas of His time, 
the state of mind of His interlocutors ; and unless you 
desire to deny that Jesus w r as a man of His age and of 
His race, how can you abstract Him from His environ- 
ment and attribute to Him ideas that have neither date 
nor place?" 

When we recall that none of Christ's sayings were re- 
duced to writing during His life-time ; that the four Gos- 
pels were written not earlier than from twenty to fifty 
years after Christ's death, and were taken largely from 
the recollections of the few unlettered living men who 
heard Him speak, and from traditional and abbreviated 
reports ; and also, in view of the fact that at least two of 
the Evangelists never saw Christ or heard His voice ; — 
w 7 hen we take all this into account, how can we be sure, 
or presume, that all of His reported sayings are a full and 
exact repetition of what He did say? 

Apply these suggestions to the Judgment discourse, in 
the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, and who can be 
bold enough to build so dogmatic and awful a theory as 
that of endless punishment upon w T hat is here reported. 
Then, consider further, that this discourse is given only 
by Matthew T , and is not even referred to by any of the 



244 THE PROBLEM OF FIXAL DESTIXY. 

others, as if it were unimportant ; and consider again, that 
if it had been reported by other of the Evangelists that 
doubtless different words, in part, would have been 
used, — and surely no one should be too positive as to the 
conclusion he draws from such a rendering. 

3. A third accompanying and modifying fact grows 
out of the prevailing ideas among the Jewish people in 
Christ's day on the subject of the future life. Up to near 
the close of the Old Testament writing, the Jews appear 
to have had no clear convictions on this subject. But 
when Christ came an entire change in this respect had 
taken place. The great proportion of the people now 
believed not only in the future life, but in judgments and 
awards after death. Their ideas were vague and sensu- 
ous; but they were pronounced, as the contention be- 
tween the Pharisees on the one side, and the Saducees 
on the other reveal ; and Paul's appeal to the Pharisees 
on that subject, made for the purpose of dividing his 
enemies, reveals the same fact. Just how this change of 
view was brought about is not clearly known ; it is 
enough to know that it was the prevailing opinion among 
the Jew's in Christ's day. Josephus is very full and ex- 
plicit in his statement that the Jews, except the small 
sect of Saducees, were strenuous believers in a future 
life, and in future punishment. Indeed, Christ's words 
in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew on that subject 
were little more than a re-statement, so far as judgment 
and penalty go, of what the people themselves previously 
Relieved. What Christ did was simply to give, as the 
ground of future punishment, a want of sympathy and 
love for the least of those whom He came to save. This 
is the central fact in the statement, and the circumstance 
of judgment which was brought in to emphasize that 



Christ's words ox future punishment. 245 



fact was only a recognition of something that the people 
would admit and insist upon. 

Christ attacked positive sins, but if men's opinions 
were generally in the right direction, He let them alone. 
If they believed in a judgment to come, that was enough, 
and so He left them on that subject where they were; 
just as He did on the subject of demoniacal possession. 

Professor Edersheim, of Oxford, in his great work on 
the Life of Christ, after stating clearly what the prevail- 
ing view on future punishment among the Jews was, says : 

"The views held at the time of Christ must have been 
those which the hearers of Christ entertained ; and what- 
ever those were, Christ did not, at least, directly, con- 
tradict, or, so far as we can know, intend to contradict 
or to correct them/' 

This statement in different forms, he repeats on several 
occasions. Christ left the Jews on that subject where 
they were. "They believed," Edersheim says, "in Fu- 
ture Punishment and also, in Final Restoration for most, 
especially of the Jews.'' Their views were crude and in- 
definite. They knew something about ages or aeons, 
but as for endlessness they had no clear conception of 
it, as perhaps even we ourselves have not. My point is 
that Christ, in Matthew, only for the sake of emphasizing 
a great duty, recognized the Jewish idea of future pun- 
ishment, but without even intending to pronounce upon 
it, or to carry it beyond their existing coarse and 
shadowy beliefs. In this view, which I hold to be cor- 
rect, the passage in Matthew ought not to be forged into 
a dogma for the support, literally, of eternal punishment. 

4. A fourth modification consists in the fact that 
Christ's method of teaching was after the parabolic, em- 
blematic and figurative style which then prevailed, and 



246 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

which is always more or less resorted to among crude 
and uncultivated people. Figurative language is more 
easily understood by children and undeveloped minds 
than any other; not because it conveys exact thought, 
but because it conveys general impressions, and teaches 
truth in a general, indefinite way. Christ's parables all 
have important meaning; we feel their power, but it 
takes an exegete to bring out the exact point and formu- 
late it into a doctrine ; in some cases, the wisest of men 
are still contending as to what that formulation, if at- 
tempted, should be. There is no probability that those 
whom the Lord addressed could have put the meaning 
of His figures and parables into words of accurate and 
definite meaning. Christ's statement of the general 
judgment, if it be not in fact a parable, is yet so figurative 
and scenic as to show that He never intended it to be 
crystallized into dogma. Jesus was one of the most un- 
literal, parabolic and hyperbolic teachers that ever lived. 
What He says about the prayer of faith sending moun- 
tains into the sea, about giving one's cloak to the thief 
that steals one's coat, or the cutting off of one's hand or 
the plucking out of one's eye if they offend, and many 
other such things contain living principles but not literal 
truth. Much that Christ said, including Matt. 25, was 
never intended to be taken literally. 

5. A fifth, and closely related fact is that, in the Bible, 
spectacular, scenic and sensuous descriptions are often 
used to set forth other facts and spiritual truths of an 
entirely different nature. The prophecy and its fulfill- 
ment are often so far apart that, to one who has not 
spiritual discernment, they appear to have no connection 
whatever with each other. To illustrate : 

All are familiar with that Pentecostal scene which took 



Christ's words ox future punishment. 247 



place in the upper room when the Holy Spirit descended 
with great power and spiritual effect upon the people. 
Peter says that this was in fulfillment of a prophecy by 
Joel, which he quotes as follows : 



I will pour forth of my spirit upon all flesh; 

And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 

And your young men shall see visions, 

And your old men shall dream dreams; 

And on my servants and on my handmaidens in those days 

Will I pour out of my spirit and they shall prophesy, 

And I will show wonders in heaven above 

And signs on the earth beneath; 

Blood and fire and vapor of smoke; 

The sun shall be turned into darkness, 

And the moon into blood, 

Before the day of the Lord come; 

That great and notable day; 

And it shall be that whosoever shall 

Call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. 



Who would have expected such a spectacular catas- 
trophic prophecy to find its fulfillment in that spiritual 
manifestation in the upper room? It was a spiritual, but 
not a literal fulfillment or anything like it. 

Another similar case is seen in the first coming of 
Christ. The Jews were looking for Him and they ex- 
pected Him to come in great glory as a temporal deliv- 
erer to break off the Roman yoke and make the Jewish 
the greatest and most glorious nation that ever existed. 
They took the prophecies of His coming and of His 
kingdom literally; viewed in that way, they were in the 
main justified in their expectation as any one may see 
who reads some of the last chapters of Isaiah, parts of 
Zechariah and of the other prophets. It is the law of 
prophecy that spectacular and sensuous description is to 



248 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTIXY. 



have a quiet, spiritual fulfillment that is far from literal 
as possible. 

An instance like this relates to Christ's second coming. 
The apostles and early Christians expected Him to ap- 
pear literally, in great glory, attended by hosts of angels, 
in their generation. They were mistaken ; yet they took 
their idea from Christ's own words, where, after de- 
scribing the scene in the most vivid, spectacular, catas- 
trophic and literal manner, He said distinctly to His dis- 
ciples : "All these things shall be fulfilled before this gen- 
eration shall pass away." "Some of you/' He said, "stand- 
ing here shall not taste death till all these things be 
fulfilled." Did Christ deceive the people, or did they 
deceive themselves by taking His words literally, when 
He meant that His coming should be a spiritual and not 
a physical, spectacular manifestation? 

One other striking instance is in the twenty-fourth 
chapter of Matthew, and also in the twenty-first chapter 
of Luke, where Christ predicts the overthrow of Jeru- 
salem in these words : "Immediately after these days the 
sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her 
light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers 
of heaven shall be shaken." Did all this or anything 
corresponding to it happen when Jerusalem was de- 
stroyed? It is then, the almost uniform habit to em- 
phasize a coming event by some scenic representation 
that never takes place literally, or in any scenic sense. 

Apply these illustrations to the twenty-fifth chapter of 
Matthew with which they are closely associated, and 
which is equally spectacular, catastrophic and physical, 
and is it not highly probable that the real fulfillment of 
what Jesus there said will be as different from what the 
people of that day expected, and from what many now 



Christ's words ox future punishment. 249 



expect, as were the prophecies of the Pentecost, of His 
first coming, and all the others, different from their actual 
fulfillment? His words are no more definite in this case 
than they were in the others. 

6. We now come to the serious and difficult but tenta- 
tive question that bears directly on our problem. Jesus, 
in the New Testament, is called sometimes the Son of 
God and oftener the Son of Man. Under the first title 
He has no visible form, and He is to us what He was to 
John in the opening of His Gospel ; under the second, 
we think of Him as a human being in human likeness ; 
and in that likeness there were times when the fullness 
of divine light and power came upon Him so as to over- 
shadow and beatify the human and make Him indeed 
the Son of God. But when Jesus lived here in the 
earthly body was He always endowed with Omniscience 
as to knowledge and with Omnipotence as to power? Or 
rather was He not in His incarnate state subject to the 
essential conditions and limitations of other men? We 
know that He was tempted in all points like as we are ; 
and this presupposes human conditions. We know that 
the child Jesus grew in stature and in wisdom as other 
children do, and in favor with God and man as all 
should. We know that He was naturally endowed 
with intellectual powers of the highest order, and with a 
moral and spiritual nature of marvelous development. 
He lived a life of prayer and dependence on His Father, 
as all should. His thinking appeared to run almost en- 
tirely along ethical, charitable and spiritual lines ; and 
here His conceptions and teachings were perfect, the 
ideals of all ages. He accepted without question the 
writings of the Old Testament and was familiar with 
them, as frequent references reveal. But as for the ap- 



250 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

plication of His own principles to some of the problems 
of the Nineteenth Century, He probably had no concep- 
tion of them. His knowledge of general literature, of 
the history of other nations, and of natural science as we 
understand it, must have been limited to that of His 
own people and day. 

Jesus was strictly a Jew, sharing the patriotism that 
burned with full and hidden flame in every Jewish heart. 
He recognized the limitations of His life-work, and never 
sought with His own hand or voice to reach the world 
outside the Jewish faith. There is no proof that He 
thought of Himself or was thought of in His own family 
and neighborhood as the expected Messiah until He arrived 
at early manhood. In His public life He rebuked the wick- 
edness of His people, and the wicked practices into which 
they had fallen ; but He did not address other nations, 
or speak of them, except in their relations to the Jewish 
people ; for He was not sent but to the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel. He was educated in Jewish thought 
and it is conceded, as we have seen, that He was influ- 
enced by it, so far as ethical and spiritual truth would 
allow. Beyond this He made no protest. The Jews, as 
we have also seen, in His day believed in life after death 
and in future punishment for the wicked, and that such 
punishment for all except the Jews would be eternal. 
Their ideas were crude and sensuous, but Jesus accepted 
them in so far as they did not militate against ethical 
righteousness and spiritual life. That Jesus' knowledge 
on questions of eschatology was not Omniscient is evi- 
denced by the fact that on one point, at least, He frankly 
stated that He was ignorant. Of that day and hour 
knoweth no man, not the angels nor the Son, but the 
Father only. If Jesus confessed His ignorance on one 



Christ's words on future punishment. 251 

point, very likely He would have confessed on others 
relating to life after death if there had been occasion to 
speak of it. 

I do not see how any one can study the twenty-fourth 
and twenty-fifth chapters of Matthew in connection with 
the twenty-first and the last part of the seventeenth of 
Luke, in which the destruction of Jerusalem, His own 
second coming, the Judgment and the end of the world 
are foretold, without feeling that the whole subject is 
left in a confused state. He seems to say that the fall 
of the Jewish nation, the second coming of Christ, and 
the end of the world will be contemporaneous events, 
and that they will all take place before that generation 
shall pass away. He says that there were some standing 
there who should not see death until all those things 
should be fulfilled. The apostles took His words liter- 
ally, and so they believed, and earnestly taught, that 
Jesus would return in glory, and that the great consum- 
mation would be reached in that generation. They 
looked for this second appearing daily. They were dis- 
appointed ; they were mistaken ; and this, on one of four 
grounds, or on all combined. 1. The words that Jesus 
spoke may not have been correctly reported. 2. The 
apostles may have misapprehended Jesus' meaning, and 
so been led into mistake. 3. Jesus Himself may have 
been more or less uncertain and confused as to the mat- 
ters of which He Himself spoke. Or 4. Jesus may have 
had full knowledge but saw that the people were not yet 
prepared to receive it, and so, intentionally, He left them 
and the whole subject in comparative obscurity. On any 
one of these grounds, or on them all combined, it be- 
comes clear that these mysterious chapters, including the 
last words of the twenty-fifth of Matthew, afford no 



252 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



rational basis for positive dogmatic statement. Let those 
who shrink from the view here outlined present another 
that shall recognize all existing facts, and explain them 
more satisfactorily. If the above view, or anything like 
it, in relation to the Omniscience of the Son of Man, 
especially on questions of Eschatology, be true, then it 
would be seen that the creedal theory of eternal punish- 
ment from these words of Jesus is not established. 

7. As for the judgment scene in Matthew it may be 
either a parable, like that of Dives and Lazarus, or a gen- 
eral statement of practical religious truth ; but it is not a 
theological dogma. 

The whole chapter made up of parables is occupied 
with the subject of judgment as connected with conduct 
and character, especially of the Jews. From the first to 
the fourteenth verse, we have the parable of the wise and 
foolish virgins ; from the fourteenth to the thirty-first 
verse, we have the parable of the Talents, or of the Un- 
faithful Steward, upon whom judgment is pronounced, 
and in which the Pharisees were chiefly intended. Then, 
with no intervening clause to show that parabolic teach- 
ing is discontinued, comes the discourse that we are con- 
sidering. Christ describes two sorts of persons ; one 
class is compassionate toward the needy and the other 
is not; and it is on this ground alone that judgment is 
pronounced. If we have a parable here, — as I believe 
we have, — then the central truth in it is. not the judg- 
ment, but the duty of caring for the needy in whom 
Christ is represented, and the sin of failing to do so. 
This is the central thought of the passage and the judg- 
ment which follows is quite incidental to the main pur- 
pose, and so is not authoritative on the question of eternal 



Christ's words ox future punishment. 253 

destiny. It is brought in to emphasize the duty of kind- 
ness to the needy. 

But suppose the passage, whether a parable or not, 
does center in the general judgment, what then? I can 
only answer in part, as this scene must reappear in the 
next chapter, on the general resurrection and final judg- 
ment. 

But, here, two things are to be noted as bearing on the 
doctrine of eternal punishment. One is that the whole 
argument which we have been considering to show that 
that doctrine is not authoritatively stated in the passage, 
has to be refuted. After that, this difficulty must be 
met. If one part of the sentence is to be taken literally, 
the whole of it must be so taken. If eternal means neces- 
sarily endless, then eternal fire must mean literally eternal 
fire. But who in our day will admit this? Still further, 
the Greek phrase taethne, here rendered all the na- 
tions usually, in the Bible, means the Gentile nations. 
It is used with this limitation at least eighty times, and 
is probably so used here; and if so the old argument is 
ruined. As to the other Greek word, ioneon, translated 
eternal, we know that this word often means aeons or 
ages, and has a time limit, as, e. g., the eternal hills, 
and it may be so here. I do not say it is limited, only 
that it may be, which is all my contention calls for. And 
further still, the old doctrine to be sustained, must over- 
throw one of the most fundamental and well-established 
laws of Biblical exegesis, which is — I quote a standard 
work on hermeneutics — that "Any text which is capable 
of an interpretation in support of either of two opposing 
theories cannot be used as a proof text in support of 
either/' On this ground the passage in hand should be 
thrown out of the argument entirely. 



254 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

But, it will be objected that this is not the only passage 
in which Christ introduced the question of future pun- 
ishment. True, but it is the most formidable one, and 
for that reason it was selected. As for the others, sub- 
stantially the same course of study as that applied to the 
twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew applies to them all, and 
leads to a similar conclusion. As for what we find in the 
writings of the apostles on this subject, including the 
"lake of fire and brimstone" that so often appears in Rev- 
elation, it is all an echo, and sometimes an exaggerated 
echo of Jewish thought, or of what Christ said, chiefly in 
the passage now under examination ; so, as was premised 
at the beginning, what this does not establish nothing 
can. 

In all this I am not denying the fact of future punish- 
ment, nor its terrible nature. It is indeed, a fearful thing, 
and must endure as long as sin continues. All I am 
questioning is its endlessness as being established in 
Matthew twenty-fifth ; and what I am trying to do is to 
put upon Christ's words the gentlest, and not the sternest 
interpretation of which they are fairly capable. This 
course seems to me to be more in accordance with 
Christ's spirit and mission, more honorable to God, more 
hopeful and just to man, and is what every Christian 
heart wants to believe if there exists any rational ground 
for hope and confidence. 

My conclusion then, rests on cumulative evidence, and 
is one of strong probability. Demonstration either way 
is impossible. But, to my mind, the weight of proba- 
bility leads me to conclude that Christ's words in the 
twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew were spoken for some 
other purpose than that of teaching that a large part of 
mankind would go into absolutely eternal punishment. 



Christ's words on future punishment. 255 

9. I have reserved for the last word what I regard as 
a conclusive argument against the traditional interpreta- 
tion. It is, that that interpretation is a square contradic- 
tion of what Christ Himself repeatedly declared to have 
been the great purpose of His coming into the world, and 
of other great texts of similar import. These are His 
own words : (John 3 : 17.) "For God sent not His Son 
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world 
through Him might be saved/' (John 12: 47.) "For I 
came not to judge the world, but to save the world." 
(Luke 9 : 56.) "For the Son of Man is not come to de- 
stroy men's lives, but to save them." Again, (John 12: 
32.) "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." 
(John 10: 10.) "I am come that ye might have life and 
that ye might have it more abundantly." 

These, and other such passages, unembarrassed with 
scenic representation, parable, or entanglement with 
other questions, state definitely the purpose for which 
Christ came into the world ; and, I repeat, it is the exact 
opposite of that which is ascribed to Him by the tra- 
ditional interpretation of Matthew twenty-fifth. What 
Christ says of His own mission is confirmed by His apos- 
tles; as, for example: (1 John 3: 8.) "For this purpose 
the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy 
the works of the devil." 

I do not see how any thoughtful, fair-minded person 
can, with all the facts before him, hesitate to expound the 
twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew in the light of these great 
and positive sayings as to the purpose of Christ's earthly 
mission ; nor, if he does do this, how he can fail to see 
that that chapter must be fairly susceptible of an interpre- 
tation widely different from the one involved in the tra- 
ditional theory. For myself, I must believe that Christ 



256 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



stated the purpose of His own coming correctly, and that 
the purpose for which He came will yet be accomplished. 

If this study furnishes rational ground for belief that 
the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew does not necessarily 
teach the doctrine of endless pnishment, and is fairly 
susceptible of a different and milder interpretation, then 
the purpose I have had in view is accomplished. 



Christ's second coming. 



2 57 



CHAPTER XVII. 

CHRIST'S SECOND COMING, THE RESURREC- 
TION AND FINAL JUDGMENT IN 
THE PROBLEM. 

The Second Coming of Christ, the Resurrection from 
the Dead, and the Final Judgment, are among the fore- 
most doctrines of the New Testament. Our Lord fre- 
quently referred to each of them, and, in the Epistles they 
are a theme of perpetual interest. 

The three doctrines are so interblended as to be parts 
of a common whole. They could not, except to a very 
limited extent be studied separately; and the same gen- 
eral principles of interpretation and of reasoning relate 
to them all. For this reason the three are grouped under 
one heading. Obviously it is impossible, in a single 
chapter, to study these great subjects in their entirety. 
I must, therefore, fence off the field for inquiry and admit 
only such parts as relate more directly to a solution of the 
problem of Human Destiny. 

The first matter that claims attention then, is a state- 
ment of these doctrines, as they have been held from the 
first by the churches, and have been written in Historic 
Creeds for many hundreds of years. The common belief 
on these subjects, as it was conceived by the Jewish 
Church, and has since been accepted by the Christian 
Church, is miraculously wonderful ; so much so that its 
full statement should be its own disproval. 



258 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

It assumes that Christ's Second Advent, and all that 
accompanied and followed it, is to be taken in the most 
literal and catastrophic sense. It affirms that Christ, at 
His second coming, will appear suddenly and in great 
glory in the clouds of heaven, accompanied by hosts of 
angels ; that the Archangel of God will be there, and will 
blow a great trumpet whose sound shall reach and startle 
heaven, hell and earth; that then, in a moment, in the 
twinkling of an eye, all who are in their graves shall 
come forth (assuming apparently that the spirits of the 
dead are yet in their graves) ; the sea also is to give up 
its dead. All these are to reappear in the very bodies 
they had while living on earth. All the good who once 
lived here and have died and gone to Paradise (whatever 
place that is) hearing the trumpet call, will at once leave 
their happy abode, come back to the earth, find their 
former bodies essentially as they left them, and re-enter- 
ing these bodies they will hasten to stand at Christ's right 
hand beside the great white throne, resting possibly on 
the Mount of Olives. Among those who thus come from 
Paradise, will be all the children of all the ages who died 
in infancy, and all the weak-minded who ever lived; 
these, returning to earth will find the very bodies they 
had left here perhaps thousands of years before, and 
thus clothed upon, they too will stand to be judged. 

And all the souls in Hades, translated in our Scriptures 
hell, will come from their dungeons back to the earth 
where they once lived, and where they too will find and 
re-enter their old bodies, and will then be arranged at 
Christ's left hand. In the meantime all who shall be 
alive on the earth when the Archangel's great trumpet 
sounds, and the spectacular wonder begins, will not die, 
but will be caught up in the air, good and bad alike, 



Christ's second coming. 



259 



bodies and spirits together, and will be assigned to their 
respective places on the right or left hand of the Judge 
where they are soon to be tried. 

While all this is going on, the whole globe will be 
wrapt in awful flame of conflagration ; the earth shall 
melt with fervent heat and all shall be burned up. In the 
midst of this fearful drama, the judgment scene will be 
opened. The millions of millions of the human race will 
be there assembled (as many think in the Valley of Je- 
hoshaphat, a little valley between Jerusalem and the 
Mount of Olives, capable of holding perhaps one hun- 
dred thousand people). Thus gathered together each 
individual of the race, good and bad alike, in turn, will 
be called before the bar of God, there to stand and give 
strict account of all the deeds done in the body ; even to 
every idle word, — thousands of years before ; but noth- 
ing will be asked of what each may have done in the long 
intermediate experience between death and judgment. 
This period, a thousand times longer than earthly life, 
is left a blank as if the spirits of men had remained in un- 
conscious sleep through that vast length of time. 

How long this judgment scene is to continue, who the 
witnesses are to be, and whether or not there will be ad- 
vocates on either side, or on both sides, is unknown. 
But when, at length the great assize is ended, judgment 
is pronounced, the Judge, in the most formal, solemn 
manner will acquit the righteous (but on what grounds 
they will be pronounced righteous is left to inference) 
and send them back into a higher glory than was that 
from which they came. As for the unrighteous, they will 
be sentenced to eternal misery, and sent, not back into 
Hades whence they came, but into a place of outer dark- 
ness, or, into a lake of fire and burning brimstone, where, 



260 THE PROBLEM OF FIXAL DESTINY. 

it is said, the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched, 
and where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth for- 
ever. And this is the second death. 

With slight variations, such for example as the thou- 
sand years of millennium necessitates, this has been sub- 
stantially the creed of the Church, Jewish and Christian, 
for about two thousand years. If the correctness of this 
statement is doubted, I ask the doubter to read the his- 
toric creeds of the Church from near the beginning of 
the Christian Era and since, as they have been collected 
in Dr. SchafFs Creeds of Christendom, and other similar 
works. I have space for two or three quotations, as 
fair specimens of them all. 

The following is from the Creed of the Reformed 
(Dutch) Church in America : "Finally, we believe, ac- 
cording to the word of God when the time appointed by 
the Lord (which is unknown to all creatures) is come and 
the number of the elect is complete, that our Lord Jesus 
Christ will come from heaven corporeally and visibly, as 
He ascended, with great glory and majesty, to declare 
Himself Judge of the quick and the dead, burning this old 
world with fire and flame to cleanse it. And then all men 
will personally appear before this great Judge, both men 
and women and children, that have been from the begin- 
ning of the world to the end thereof, being summoned by 
the voice of the Archangel and by the sound of the trum- 
pet of God. For all the dead shall be raised out of the 
earth, and their souls joined and united with their proper 
bodies in which they formerly lived. As for those who 
shall then be living, they shall not die as the others, but 
be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and from cor- 
ruptible become incorruptible. Then, the books (that is 
to say, the consciences) shall be opened and the dead 



Christ's second coming. 



261 



judged according to what they have done in the world 
whether it be good or evil." 

The following is from the Westminster Confession of 
Faith : 

"At the last day, such as shall be found alive, shall not 
die, but be changed, and all the dead shall be raised up 
with the selfsame bodies, and none other, although with 
different qualities, which shall be united again to their 
souls forever/' 

Of the Last Judgment, it says : — 

"In that day, not only the apostate angels shall be 
judged, but, likewise, all persons that have lived upon 
earth shall appear before the tribunal of Christ, to give 
an account of their thoughts, words and deeds and to 
receive according as they have done in the body, whether 
good or evil." 

Then follows the pronouncing of judgment, as in all 
the Creeds, the righteous entering into eternal life and 
the wicked being cast into eternal misery. 

These are average quotations upon the subjects treated* 
and do they not justify and defend the general view I 
have given of the current doctrine of the Churches on 
Christ's Second Coming, the Resurrection and the Final 
Judgment, except that I did not bring the fallen angels 
into the gathering hosts? 

I now come, in the second place, to outline another 
view of these doctrines which stands over against the 
preceding view, and which many earnest, thoughtful 
Christian people are coming to adopt as both rational and; 
in accord with the spirit of the New Testament Scriptures, 

This view rejects entirely the scenic and catastrophic 
theory, and finds for these doctrines a spiritual meaning 
and manifestation only. I will explain. The Second 



262 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTIXY. 

Coming of Christ is seen to be a great and glorious 
reality on which the saving of the world turns ; but it is 
'a silent, unseen, spiritual coming into the hearts of men, 
moulding them into the divine image and inspiring them 
with the divine life. It makes no visible display. All 
the spectacular imagery of Scripture made so much of 
in the other theory is only, as we have seen elsewhere, 
to arrest attention, and is but scaffolding to be of use 
for a time in rearing the spiritual temple, and then 
to be thrown aside as useless lumber, so that the temple 
itself may stand forth unencumbered, a "thing of beauty 
and a joy forever/' 

According to this view, Christ began to come a second 
time as He promised to do, in "that generation." On 
the day of Pentecost, at which time, in the scenic language 
of prophecy, "the sun was darkened and the moon turned 
to blood," — the second coming of Christ began to take 
place. He was then and there present with His people 
in a fuller and deeper sense than He had ever been, even 
while dwelling with them in human form. That was "the 
great and notable day of the Lord," as the Prophet Joel 
well called it. It was the morning of the long Gospel 
day of Christ's second coming. And He has been com- 
ing to the world, and into all hearts open to receive Him 
from that day to this ; and He will come more and more, 
until the whole earth is filled with His glory, a glory 
infinitely greater than any spectacular display in the 
clouds of heaven could bring to Him, and infinitely more 
blessed and helpful to mankind. 

It is objected that this view does not conform to the 
Biblical statement. The answer is, that it agrees with 
the spirit if not with the letter of that statement. And, 
besides, Christ's first coming did not agree with the 



Christ's second coming. 



263 



scenic descriptions of that coming as given in the Old 
Testament. The Jews expected some glorified, wonder- 
ful, kingly personage to appear who should work miracles 
in their behalf, and make them the greatest nation on 
earth ; and, because Christ did not meet that expectation 
they hated, rejected and murdered Him. Christ's sec- 
ond coming was likely to be as different from the popular 
expectation of the Christian world and especially of the 
-converted Jews, as was His first coming to the Jewish 
nation. In both cases, His coming was infinitely better 
than what they looked for would have been. "The letter 
killeth but the spirit giveth life." The day of Christ's 
second coming, then, is the day when the old Mosaic 
Dispensation passed away, and the new Gospel Dispensa- 
tion was ushered in. On the morning of that long and 
glorious day Christ's second advent began to appear, and 
He will continue coming more and more, "conquering 
and to conquer" till all the world, with rejoicings and 
hallelujas, will fall at His feet and worship Him as Lord 
of lords and King of kings. This is the glory that the 
spectacular representation emblemizes, and how different 
from yet how much above the emblem is the reality. 

If now, we turn to the closely related doctrine of the 
Resurrection, the same method of exposition should be 
applied. The Resurrection from the dead, like Christ's 
second coming, is a continuous event or series of events, 
that takes place at the close of every individual life, each 
spirit rising, apart by itself, and not all at once. The 
contention is that the spirit in the physical body is itself 
a spiritual body ; and that what we call death is the spirit 
of man, in its spirit form, withdrawing from the body; 
and what we call the resurrection from the dead is that 
same spirit rising out of the death of the body into a 



264 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

higher form of life, which is yet the same life continued, 
but now independent of the body. This view accords 
with Paul's words : "There is a natural body and there is a 
spiritual body." It is not the physical body then that 
is raised but the spirit. When men did not distinguish 
between body and spirit, then of course the body was 
the man, and this is what it was expected would be raised 
from the dead. The raising from the dead, then, is con- 
tinuous as Christ's second coming is continuous. There 
is nothing spectacular about it, except in a figurative 
or symbolic sense. 

Practically, according to the new theory, what is called 
the Judgment follows the same general law. The call 
to Judgment, like the Resurrection is continuous, and 
not to all the race instantaneous and catastrophic. 
Christ's Judgment Day like His second coming and His 
resurrecting power, extends throughout His mediatorial 
reign. Under the general government of God, and, es- 
pecially, under Christ's reign, men are all being judged ; 
that is, they are being tried, tested, approved or con- 
demned every day they live. The same Judgment Day 
goes on after death as before, and will, as Paul has shown 
in the fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians, until the 
time arrives when all things are subdued unto Christ, 
then will He lay down His mediatorial reign, that God 
may be All in All. Till then the door of hope is open, 
and the day of judgment continues. All spectacular 
representations, to repeat, are but scaffolding or scenery 
used for the impressive setting forth of the great fact that 
all men are to be judged, that is, tested, tried and dis- 
posed of according to their characters. This is partly 
realized in this life ; and in the life after death it will be- 
come prefectly manifest, because then all men will be 



Christ's second coming. 



265 



seen, known and treated according to what they are, 
and not according to what they seem and claim to be. 
On this principle awards are conditioned upon char- 
acter, and men will be judged, rewarded or punished 
according to their deserts. 

We have now before us the two systems of belief, and 
and methods of interpretation as regards the three great 
doctrines of Christ's Second Coming, the Resurrection 
from the Dead, and the Judgment. They stand side by 
side. I have dwelt at length upon the two systems be- 
cause I believed that a full statement of them would, of 
itself, go far towards deciding their respective merits. 
I cannot quote venerable creeds in support of the second 
view; but, it would be easy to give the names of many 
scholarly men, holding high places in the Christian 
Church, who adopt substantially this second system of 
interpretation on these questions, and hold it to be both 
reasonable and in full accord with the meaning and spirit 
of the Holy Scriptures. 

And now, in the third place, we come to a study of the 
two systems with a view to the discovery of their relative 
merits. They must be examined in the light of facts, rea- 
son and Scripture. The two systems stand so evidently 
over against each other that both cannot be true ; nor is 
there room for any middle or common ground between 
them. The acceptance of one view means a rejection of 
the other ; and yet, the real significance as to bottom facts 
is not so great as, at first glance would appear. The 
verities in both are the same. Only the time, place and 
surroundings of their accomplishment are changed. 

I adopt substantially the second view, and for reasons 
that will now in brief, be stated : 

1. To my mind the very wording of the two views as 



266 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



just given, leads me to reject the first, and so to accept 
the other. One is self-evidently wrong, the other is self- 
evidently right. Very often the statement of a position 
drawn out fairly and at such length that it can be clearly 
seen, is its own argument for or against; and we have 
here an example. Suppose that some person should 
come to me with a narrative so remarkable, extravagant 
and marvelous as to be entirely unlike anything that had 
ever been known to take place; a narrative that stands 
against all probability, science and reason ; — what ought 
I to think and say concerning it? No answer is needed 
as the question answers itself. Such a case corresponds 
to that of the first of the theories under consideration. 

2. Then again, look at this first named theory as it 
stands related to the ordinary and uniform operations of 
nature. The normal operations of nature are not spec- 
tacular nor catastrophic, but quiet, silent, uniform and 
without observation. Mark the movements of the plan- 
etary system, the coming and going of the seasons, the 
alternations of day and night, and the vegetable and ani- 
mal growths over all the earth. How hidden and almost 
silent and uniform are all the movements of nature. 
God's laws are uniform and unostentatious in their opera- 
tions ; and this is no less true of the moral and spiritual 
world than it is of the physical. The world, the whole 
universe is a unit. Now, here comes in a theory that 
utterly denies such harmony and unity; it introduces a 
series of such miraculous wonders as w r ere never known 
or heard of in the operations of nature, and which implies 
the reversal of the laws and operations of nature ; and all 
this where no apparent necessity exists, since all that is 
vital or valuable in the first theory is fully secured in the 
second, and this by perfectly simple and natural opera- 



Christ's second coming. 



267 



tions, and with no apparently needless scenic and spec- 
tacular display. One theory is in perfect harmony with 
all the laws of God as we see them everywhere in opera- 
tion ; the other sets aside the order of nature and of Prov- 
idence, and substitutes instead, a series of stupendous 
marvels. Who can hesitate as to which of these theories 
is probably true? 

3. Why then, it is asked, if this be so, was the miracu- 
lous theory ever originated and made a doctrine of the 
Church through so many centuries? When once estab- 
lished and accepted a single words explains how it was 
continued. The word Tradition accounts for it. But 
how and when did the catastrophic theory originate? 
It was evidently of Jewish origin. As we have seen, in 
part, elsewhere, the Jews in Christ's day, with only the 
small sect of Saducees dissenting, not only believed in 
the resurrection of the body, — as Mary expressed it when 
talking with Christ about Lazarus, "in the last day," — 
but their views of the resurrection were sensuous and 
coarse. They expected the literal body, clothes and all, 
to rise, and that man's appetites and passions would be 
revived, and that all this would be brought about in the 
most dramatic and miraculous manner. This common 
view, as was seen in the last chapter, influenced the early 
Church in such a way as to modify modes of thinking 
and speaking upon all eschatological questions. Christ's 
simple statement of facts was naturally, perhaps un- 
consciously, perhaps intentionally, made to harmonize 
with Jewish theories that embodied those views. In the 
early centuries the Jewish theory, almost in its coarseness, 
and according to the literal interpretation was accepted 
even by the most learned and pious of the Christian 



268 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

fathers. I quote a sentence or two from Augustine to 
illustrate. He says : 

"Every body, however dispersed here, shall be restored 
perfect in the resurrection. Every body shall be com- 
plete in quantity and quality. As many hairs as have 
been shaved off, or nails cut, shall not return in such 
enormous quantities to deform their original places, but 
neither shall they perish ; they shall return into the body 
into that substance from which they grew/' 

Such theories never came from Christ; they were of 
Jewish origin, as was the whole system of catastrophic 
phenomena, in which the three after-world doctrines now 
under consideration, were so entangled as to lose, in large 
part, their spiritual meaning. The second view of these 
doctrines rejects the catastrophic and Jewish scaffolding, 
restores the spiritual conception and, as well, the spiritual 
conception of Christ's Kingdom, and should therefore be 
accepted in place of the traditional theory. 

4. We come now to the Holy Scriptures. What have 
they to say upon this great subject? First of all, then, 
what do we mean, or, rather, what should we mean by 
the term Holy Scriptures, or the Word of God? The 
book itself, w T hich is only paper and binding, is not what 
we should mean. Nor are the words and sentences 
which are printed with ink, a thing of man's device, what 
we ought to mean. Words are at best only clumsy sym- 
bols of thought, as Bushnell has shown in his essay on 
the Use of Words. The words in the Bible might have 
been greatly changed from what they are, and yet the 
real Bible might have remained unchanged. The glow- 
ing figures of speech and symbolic representations of 
truth, are not the Holy Bible. The Holy Bible is the 
living truth, the truth of life, which the book, its words, 



Christ's second coming. 



269 



its figures of speech, its predictions and its emblems 
partly hold and try to express. Inspiration has reference 
to the truth itself and not to the form of expressing it, 
or rather of trying to express it. Spiritual truth can 
never be fully expressed in words spoken or written. In 
this world God's Spirit must be superadded. In the 
Spirit world words are useless ; for there, heart reads 
heart directly without the media of w r ords. 

The words, figures, metaphors and symbols of the 
Bible are almost wholly of human invention. God gives 
the fact, the truth, and man expresses it as best he can. 
Writings for children, or for uncultivated people, must 
appeal largely to the imagination or they will not be 
understood or aw r aken lasting interest. This explains 
why Ezekiel and other of the prophets wrote as they did, 
and why Christ spoke in parables ; and sometimes on 
dark subjects, as in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, 
pictorially. It explains also Peter's words in the second 
epistle, where he says of the heavens that "they shall 
pass away with a great noise and the elements shall melt 
with fervent heat ; the earth, also, and the works therein 
shall be burned up/' All this is a striking, almost a 
startling figure to express the thought that God's spirit 
will move upon the hearts of men, and that the earth is 
to be purified as by fire. 

Prophetic language like this is not intended to be taken 
literally, as was shown in the chapter on Christ's words 
on future punishment in the problem. On the day of 
Pentecost, the sun was not darkened, and the moon was 
not turned into blood as the prophet Joel said it would 
be. Take another case to show that picturesque prophe- 
cies were never fulfilled according to the letter. The 
thirteenth chapter of Isaiah contains a prediction of the 



270 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



fall of Babylon in these words : "The stars of heaven and 
the constellations thereof shall not give their light ; the 
sun shall be darkened in his going forth and the moon 
shall not cause her light to shine/' Babylon fell as pre- 
dicted, and it was a great fall, but none of those signs 
took place literally or were expected to. Again, it was 
prophesied that before Christ should come the prophet 
Elijah should re-appear ; and the Jews rejected Christ be- 
cause that prophecy had not been fulfilled ; but Jesus 
said that the coming of John in the wilderness was its 
fulfillment. None of these great prophetic sayings are 
to be taken literally. They embody deep ideal truths, 
but the clothing of those truths in language is strictly a 
human invention, and is sure to be more or less influ- 
enced by preconceived notions on the subjects treated. 
I repeat again, that the Holy Scripture consists of the 
real meaning, the truth as God sees it, and not always in 
the literal form of words as men use them. 

It is once more objected that, although figurative lan- 
guage is not to be interpreted literally, yet, it must repre- 
sent a meaning corresponding with, and equal to, the 
figurative language employed. For example, if literal 
fire is not meant in Christ's w T ords in Matthew twenty- 
fifth, or in the prophecy of Peter above quoted, then 
something equally fearful is meant. If so then why was 
not that different but equally fearful thing called by 
its own name? And, besides, that theory of interpreta- 
tion, in the sense intended, is not true. On the day of 
Pentecost and in the fall of Babylon, nothing took place 
at all corresponding to the darkening of the sun and 
moon and the turning of these luminaries into blood. 
And there is no good reason to suppose that Christ's 
words in Matthew, or the prophecy of Peter, or any 



Christ's second coming. 



271 



others of like character will have any closer fulfillment 
than had those just referred to, or than those had which 
predicted Christ's first coming, by which the Jews being 
literalists were deceived. Doubtless predictions of 
Christ's second coming will prove an equal surprise to 
all literal interpreters, when they come to understand its 
true fulfillment, which will come along the line of the 
second system of interpretation. 

On the other side I ought to be able, if the second 
theory is the true one, to present some positive Scripture 
evidence in its support. Well, here in part it is. Christ 
said to Mary, in the eleventh chapter of John : "I am the 
resurrection and the life." It is not that He would some- 
time be, but that He was then the resurrection and life. 
When Mary interposed the current Jewish objection : "I 
know 7 it will be so, in the last day," He went on to add : 
"He that believeth in me though He were dead, yet shall 
He live, — live in the present tense, — and whosoever liv- 
eth and believeth in me shall never die," that is, die in 
the sense she used the word. Christ here puts the physi- 
cal death and the resurrection side by side, and so up- 
holds the second theory. Again, Christ said : "Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is 
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and 
they that hear shall live." We have here a statement 
of continuous resurrection, now and hereafter, which is 
the point in question. Again Christ said : "He that 
heareth my word and believeth on me, hath everlasting 
life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed 
from death unto life." There is no waiting for a far 
off resurrection and future judgment here. No one, I 
believe, would dispute these interpretations if he had 
not some opposite theory to maintain which required 



272 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



that these plain, literal, unfigurative passages should give 
out a different meaning. 

Christ's argument with the Pharisees, in which He 
declares Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to be then alive, 
and adds that, "God is not a God of the dead, but of the 
living," proves that the resurrection had begun before 
His day, and was going on continually. Christ's own 
resurrection immediately after death, as Paul reasons in 
the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, is a sure proof that 
men shall rise even as He rose from the dead. Besides, 
it is said that when Christ arose from the dead that others 
arose also, and were seen by the apostles. Then Peter 
describes how Christ, after the crucifixion, went into 
Hades and preached the Gospel to antediluvians who 
were then living, and within the reach of Divine mercy. 
All those texts that speak of the new life, of the eternal 
life, of life in Christ, more than suggest that the resurrec- 
tion and the judgment are not far off but near at hand. 
The disciples of that day in part so understood it, and 
Christ encouraged that understanding. 

My general conclusion then is, that Christ's second 
coming, "that great and notable day of the Lord," in- 
augurated at Pentecost was then near at hand, as Christ 
Himself said it was, and that this coming is continuous 
throughout the Christian Dispensation. Also that the 
Resurrection from the Dead is not a sudden, spectacular 
event at the end of the world, — except as the world to 
men ends at death, — but, that it begins where earthly life 
ends, and is continuous so long as physical death con- 
tinues. As for rewards and punishments consequent on 
judgment, that subject has been partly considered and 
will be more fully unfolded in the following chapter on 
the Law of Natural Consequences in the problem. 



Christ's second coming. 



273 



The bearing of all this upon the problem of Final Des- 
tiny is evident. Escatalogical views and conclusions are 
greatly changed. This life is a training school for the 
continuous life beyond. Character is everything. God's 
judgment upon every soul is ever going on in this life, 
and will extend into the life beyond, and continue as long 
as Christ's mediatorial reign endures; and the hope is 
awakened, though no positive assurance is given, that 
the whole human race may yet attain, some to the high- 
est conceivable blessedness, and all to such a moral con- 
dition as will make existence, not an infinite curse, but, 
on the whole, a positive good. 



274 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE LAW OF NATURAL CONSEQUENCES 
IN THE PROBLEM. 

There are not many greater questions before the world 
to-day than this : Why and how do penalty and pain, 
under the operations of Divine government, always fol- 
low transgression? That such is the order of nature is 
assumed and conceded ; but why and how. A clear 
answer to this question would do much to clarify many 
others, and especially that of Final Destiny. The diffi- 
culties and errors into which men fall in studying this 
question arise from mistaken conceptions of the nature 
and operations of what is called Divine Government as 
related to human governments ; and also as to the double 
nature of what is called penalty or punishment. 

We take our ideas of the Divine government largely 
from w T hat we know of human governments. The as- 
sumption is that the two are essentially alike, except that 
one is infinitely greater than the other. Very much as 
man bears the natural image of God, and so is like Him 
in that respect, — as far as the finite can be like the infinite, 
— so human governments bear the image of the Divine 
government, and the two are then alike, except that one 
is finite and the other infinite. 

On this ground men reason from one government to 
the other, and assume that what is proper and necessary 
in human governments must be the same in the govern- 



LAW OF NATURAL CONSEQUENCES. 



275 



ment of God. Those doctrines of the Creeds which are 
supposed to be founded on governmental principles, take 
shape largely from this sort of comparison. The gov- 
ernmental theories of the doctrine of the Atonement, of 
the doctrine of Forgiveness, of the doctrine of Judgment, 
and of the doctrine of Endless Punishment, all originate 
in man's conception of necessity, as it is seen and illus- 
trated in human governments. 

On the other hand, human governments shape them- 
selves, or try to, after cherished conceptions of the Divine 
government; and those conceptions are formed from 
the human point of view as to what God's government 
is and must be. For example, God is a great King, with 
absolute authority, and therefore, human governments 
must have kings with absolute authority. God rules by 
Divine right, hence earthly kings must do the same. 
God is a sovereign lawgiver; all legislative, judicial and 
executive power is vested in Him ; therefore it should be 
in kings of the earth. God rewards and punishes ; 
so, then, should earthly rulers. God protects His king- 
dom from overthrow; therefore human governments 
should have armies, navies, courts, prisons, penalties and 
capital punishments. All this enginery is borrowed from 
what men conceive to exist in the government of God; 
and much of this conception is a reflex from the necessi- 
ties of human government. 

Thus men reason both ways. First, from human gov- 
ernments up to the government of God, giving to the 
divine administration such form as they think it ought 
to possess; and then, in turn, they reason back again 
from their conceptions of what the government of God 
is, or should be, to what human governments may, of 
divine right be; thus justifying human rulers in trying 



276 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

to make themselves in their dominions what God is in 
His. 

I hold this whole course of reasoning and acting to be 
radically wrong; and this, mainly, on the ground that 
human governments and Divine government, so far as it 
is government, in the true sense of that term, are not 
alike, cannot be alike, but are and must be so radically 
different that men cannot, to any considerable extent 
reason safely from one to the other. We have only to 
glance at the facts in the two cases to see that this state- 
ment must be correct. 

The fundamental point of difference arises out of the 
infiniteness of God and the finiteness of man. Kings 
and rulers over human governments are weak, ignorant, 
erring, sinful, dependent; they are creatures of a day 
just like other men. They cannot get to the throne or 
into power except as other men put them there; and 
when in power, they cannot protect themselves, much less 
make and administer laws except as their subjects up- 
hold them. The divine right of kings is an absurdity. 
No king ever held his throne or crown one hour longer 
than the people, and the agents appointed to protect his 
reign, stood by him, as the world's history abundantly 
illustrates. Hence, human rulers and governments must 
have armies, navies, prisons and penalties as the con- 
dition of their existence. All this is the exact opposite of 
the conditions of God's government and of its perpetuity. 
If every moral being in the universe should rise against 
God, they would not have the weight of a feather towards 
effecting His overthrow. They would simply, as many 
have done, crush themselves and not God, who is inde- 
pendent, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, just, honora- 
ble and good ; and who needs no protection because He 



LAW OF NATURAL CONSEQUENCES. 



277 



is never in danger; needs no counsel because He knows 
all things ; needs no armies for there is nothing for them 
to do; and no corporal punishment because it is un- 
necessary. 

Another radical difference between human and Divine 
governments relates to the nature and methods of pen- 
alty under the two systems. In the government of God 
law is self-protective; under God it inflicts its own pen- 
alty just as cause produces effect, so that no violator of 
Divine law ever did or can escape. Penalty under human 
governments is wholly different both as to its nature and 
method. Human laws have no power of self-protection; 
they never inflict their own penalties, and would be 
worthless, except as advice, were not executives ap- 
pointed, and other provisions made for the arrest, trial and 
punishment of transgressors ; and, at best, while many es- 
cape punishment, some through mistake or intentionally 
are punished unjustly. 

Then, the kinds of punishment under the two systems 
of government are so dissimilar that we ought to have, 
as we have not, two different words to express the two 
kinds of punishment. Penalty for one and punishment 
for the other might express the two meanings that are so 
wholly different. But dictionaries do not provide for 
this. Indeed, men have so interblended the two govern- 
ments and their operations as not to see or feel the need 
of different words to express ideas so fundamentally 
different. 

This brings me to say that the central fact in the uni- 
verse of God is the principle or law of Causality. Every 
event has a cause, and the cause and event exactly cor- 
respond; and they include consequences that naturally 
follow, either at once or in due course of time. This 



278 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



order of sequence is everywhere observable and may be 
attested by thousands of illustrations. The falling of a 
meteor, the revolution of a planet, the change of the 
seasons and the whole course of nature are the results 
of adequate causes lying back of them ; and they, in turn, 
become causes of other events, and so the chain of 
causality reaches on from the greater to the less, ad 
infinitum. Let any person violate one of the principles 
or laws of nature in the physical world and he will soon 
discover that law, or the principle of order is able and 
sure to vindicate itself. If the hand comes into contact 
with fire it burns ; if one takes deadly poison he dies ; if 
one falls he is injured; and these results follow their 
causes equally whether the violation was intended or is 
accidental. In moral law the same general principle ap- 
plies. If men do right they have the rewards of virtue ; 
if they do wrong the penalty of vice falls upon them. 
These results may not follow at once, but they are as sure 
to come sooner or later as the stars are to hold their 
courses in the heavens. 

The great conclusion therefore at which we arrive is 
this : That the government of God, when we get down 
to bottom facts, is just the Law of Natural Conse- 
quences. In other words nature and her laws are en- 
dowed by the Creator with the power of self-protection 
and preservation. The natural operation of physical 
and moral law secures this apart from any outside inter- 
ference except upholding power. If nature can protect 
herself, and accomplish her Creator's designs in virtue 
of her own inherent potencies, and if she does this always 
and everywhere with unfailing certainty and with un- 
checked onward progress, then surely nothing more is 
needed. Outside interference would hinder and not help 



LAW OF NATURAL CONSEQUENCES. 



279 



the mighty movement of God's perfectly organized Crea- 
tion. In this view, the terms government of God, and 
order of nature, are nearly, if not quite interchangeable 
terms. God's government has nothing of human ma- 
chinery in it. It is simply God, working through nature, 
or nature's laws, and not otherwise, for the carrying out 
of His infinitely wise and benevolent purposes for which 
the universe exists. 

So far as physical nature and the laws that regulate 
and control matter are concerned, it is now conceded 
that nature is her own vindicator, that she needs no other, 
and that she is perfectly just, while yet she knows nothing 
of favoritism or of forgiveness. When physical law is 
violated penalty follows, in which case law is cause and 
penalty effect ; and there is no escape from this principle 
of causality. Physical law knows no forgiveness, and 
it takes no account of moral character in the strict sense 
of those terms. It blesses all who observe and curses 
all who violate its principles. When men learn from ex- 
perience and wisdom, not to violate nature's laws they 
have their reward ; but that does not save them from the 
natural consequences of former violations. Restoration 
to obedience and its rewards, learned from reflection and 
experience, is the only mercy to be found in the opera- 
tions of nature or natural law which constitutes the phys- 
ical government of God. Nature is kindly and begins 
to heal when violation ceases. Up to this point as re- 
gards natural law, I suppose that most thoughtful people 
are in substantial agreement. 

Here the question arises : How far do the same facts 
and principles apply to what is called the moral govern- 
ment of God? As physical government is the regulation 
and control of matter by fixed laws, so moral govern- 



280 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



ment is the regulation and control of moral beings and 
actions by established moral laws. The term physical 
law and moral law and the dictinction between them, 
is real and not imaginary. Different existences are to be 
operated upon differently. Moral beings are more than 
things ; they are living creatures created in God's image 
and made capable of knowing, loving and serving God, 
and of enjoying Him forever. They are endowed with 
reason, conscience and free-will ; they distinguish be- 
tween good and evil, right and wrong; they are con- 
sciously accountable and under obligation to God and 
man. Obviously then, they, as moral beings, must be 
under a system of law very different from that which ap- 
plies to inanimate matter, or to irresponsible living ani- 
mals. Moral beings must be goverend by moral law 
which corresponds to the nature that God has given them. 
It must be the law of right, of duty, and of honor, of love. 

Is the moral government of God the moral law of God, 
as His physical government is His physical law? Is the 
same principle of causality involved in both? Does 
moral law vindicate itself by inherent and natural rewards 
and penalties in the same way that physical law does, so 
that there is in the moral world no more need of outside 
interference, or of outside governmental machinery for 
special penalty, than there is in the physical world? 

Just here a wide difference of opinion seems to pre- 
vail. A class of progressive thinkers find a law of 
analogy running through every department of God's 
universe. Modern science claims that, if we can find 
what nature's laws are, and especially how they operate 
in any one sphere however limited, we may feel sure that 
we have the type of all law and operation as God has 
established it throughout His kingdom. Unity of design 



LAW OF NATURAL CONSEQUENCES. 



28l 



is found everywhere. God does not depart from a uni- 
form method in the physical or in the moral world. In 
both, the method is the same; therefore law and gov- 
ernment are one in the moral as in the physical world. 

The traditional or commonly accepted view of Divine 
moral government rejects the idea that law carries within 
itself its own support and defence, and expresses there- 
fore the real conception of God's government. That 
government, it insists, means more than the law of nat- 
ural consequences ; it means also superadded rewards for 
the righteous, and positive punishment beyond that of 
natural penalty for the wicked. A distinction is here im- 
plied, — and it is fundamental, call it by what name one 
will, — between penalty and punishment; penalty should 
mean natural consequences, and punishment superadded 
positive infliction. Is there any punishment superadded 
to natural penalty in the moral government of God more 
than there is in His physical government? 

This is a great question that enters weightily into the 
problem of Final Destiny. It is almost the decisive ques- 
tion. If the traditional theory of positive infliction, over 
and beyond that of natural and necessary consequences 
is to be accepted as true, then the problem of Destiny is, 
or may be, settled in one way ; but, if the incoming theory 
that moral law, equally with physical is self-executive, 
and has no other penalty but that of natural sequence, 
then the problem is likely to be settled in another way. 
Undoubtedly the great proportion of the Christian world, 
past and present, holds to the former view, and is pre- 
pared to support it with time honored and plausible argu- 
ment. But it is to be definitely noted that all these 
arguments are based upon, and presuppose, the ground- 
less assumption that Divine and human governments 



282 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

are essentially alike; or, so far alike that it is safe and 
proper to reason from one to the other, and to assert 
that, since human enactments cannot execute themselves, 
but have to be enforced by physical punishment outside 
of natural consequences, that the moral law of God is 
subject to the same or similar conditions. But we have 
already seen that the assumption, or major premise in 
the argument, is not true. The two governments are 
fundamentally unlike. Besides, it is now generally con- 
ceded, as we have seen, that physical law, as God Himself 
has arranged it, defends and executes itself, and this in 
such a way as to call for no outside interference, or for 
any penalty or punishment which it does not itself inflict. 
If this is true of the physical laws of God, why, I ask 
again, may it not be true of His moral law? If we find 
no intrinsic reason against such a conclusion which 
makes it impossible, or at least very improbable, then, 
on the ground of analogy and probability, it should be 
accepted. 

And, besides, if God in His moral government has for 
transgressors two kinds of consequences, one of penalty 
and another superadded of punishment, then how, in such 
a case, is this further infliction of punishment after pen- 
alty to be executed? Is God, after the law has had its 
course and penalty, to become His own direct Execu- 
tioner, to inflict, with His own hand, what His law had 
failed to do? Or will God appoint agents to execute this 
further punishment? In any case, just how is this in- 
comprehensible thing to be performed? On what 
ground can it be justified? Such questions serve to ex- 
pose the absurdity of two sets of punishment, and to 
establish the conclusion that the law of Natural Conse- 



LAW OF NATURAL CONSEQUENCES. 283 

quences, and that only, prevails in the moral, as it does 
in the physical government of God. 

To this conclusion four objections are raised : 
First, it is said that the theory of natural sequence is 
opposed to all the historic Creeds of the Church, and to 
the traditional belief of the Christian world. It may be 
so in part; but creeds made hundreds of years ago, and 
founded so far as this question is concerned on the mis- 
taken hypothesis that human and Divine governments 
are essentially alike, are not infallible. At best creeds, 
all of them, are things of human device; and many of 
them contain dogmas that only blind traditionalism can 
accept. As for the general beliefs of Christendom that 
are shaped by a few leading minds in past centuries, it is 
sufficient, perhaps, to set over against these the scientific 
conclusions of the present day, and the opinions of many 
scholarly and Christian men who, after careful search for 
truth find themselves obliged to substitute the newer 
theory of natural consequences for the old one of addi- 
tional positive punishment. Then, is it not almost un- 
thinkable that God should have two sets of punishment 
for the same offence; one of natural consequences, and 
then something else added to that afterward? This 
would be punishment superadded to penalty ; something 
never done in human governments ; and it is unreason- 
able and almost inexpressible except by circuitous 
phrases. 

2. But, I suppose that a greater objection to the view 
of natural consequences is that it does not seem to ac- 
cord with Scripture teaching. I concede that it does not 
fully conform to the letter of the Word, as we sometimes 
have it, but it does to the spirit of the Word, which is far 
more than the letter. The letter of the Word, as was 



284 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

shown in another connection is human, while its spirit or 
real vital meaning is Divine. The real teaching of the 
Bible is, that virtue shall be rewarded and vice or sin 
shall be punished ; but it goes into no philosophical or di- 
dactic statement as to how 7 these results are to be reached, 
whether by the outworking of law. itself, or by some cor- 
poral punishment outside of the natural consequences of 
violating law. Figurative language is sometimes em- 
ployed to express the blessedness of the righteous and 
the misery of the wicked ; but these figures are at least 
quite as consistent with the doctrine of natural conse- 
quences, — if the doctrine is accepted as it is being pre- 
sented, — as it is with the other theory of superadded pun- 
ishment from the direct hand of God. No one, at this 
day, takes the figures used to describe the future life of 
the righteous or of the wicked in a literal sense. God's 
Spirit gave as the truth to inspired men, that obedience 
to law would be rewarded, and disobedience would be 
punished, and then, as we have seen, left the w r ording of 
the thought to the writers themselves. On this theory, — 
and, so far as I can see on no other, — can the inspiration 
of the Scriptures in any true sense of that term be ration- 
ally maintained. 

The writers of the Bible then have expressed the doc- 
trine of reward and punishment in their own language, 
and in terms familiar to the people whom they address, 
and according to their own understandings. In those 
days all men appear to have accepted without questioning 
the idea that Divine and human governments were essen- 
tially alike; and they spoke and wrote accordingly. In 
that view they were mistaken. The mistake did not neu- 
tralize the spirit of their message, but it vitiated the form 
of it. The real spirit of the Word on the whole subject, 



LAW OF NATURAL CONSEQUENCES. 285 

is found in such passages as these : "The soul that sin- 
neth it shall die." "The sting of death is sin, but the 
strength of sin is the law ; sin, when it is finished bring- 
eth forth death." "The wages of sin is death, but the gift 
of God is eternal life." All the promises made to the 
righteous and all the threatenings against the wicked em- 
body the spirit of the doctrine of reward and punishment. 
But none of the texts quoted, nor the hundreds more like 
them explain or try to explain the exact method by which 
such results are to be reached, any more than the pas- 
sages that speak of God as Creator attempt to explain 
the method of His creation. Questions of science and of 
philosophy are not matter of Biblical revelation, but are 
left for thoughtful and observing people, one by one, to 
decide as successive stages of development make neces- 
sary and possible. On the subject of the mode of ren- 
dering reward and punishment, all I should claim is that 
the Bible leaves that matter where it found it, unsettled. 
Scientific thinking rejects the traditional view and ac- 
cepts that of natural consequences as being in accord 
with reason, fact and Scripture. 

3. Probably the strongest objection to this view of 
natural consequences is in the alleged fact that natural 
rewards and penalties are not great enough to meet the 
demands of justice. What man is wise enough to say 
such a thing intelligently? We know a little of what 
physical law can do and does do for people in this life 
who observe it, and what it can and does do for those 
who disregard it. One class is healthy, prosperous and 
happy, while the other is in the midst of suffering, priva- 
tion and death. But moral law is higher than physical ; 
it guards more sacred interests and the results of obedi- 
ence or the opposite are more marked and enduring. 



286 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



The blessings of Gospel peace and life come to one class, 
and the darkness and death of sin to the other. "Great 
peace have they that keep Thy law. The name of the 
wicked shall rot." They shall go into darkness where 
there is gnashing of teeth and where the worm dieth not. 
All that the Old Testament denounced against sin and 
sinners, all the terrible figures of the New Testament, 
are not too fearful to describe the character and condition 
of one who deliberately and continuously arrays himself 
against the holy law of God. That law is just as valuable 
as are the interests which it protects ; and the penalty 
which it inflicts on wilful violators, as the natural conse- 
quence of wrongdoing, is hell itself. It is often all this 
in the present world. Think how sin has corrupted and 
ruined nations, communities, families and individuals ; 
and how it has turned, and is now turning large portions 
of this beautiful w T orld into a charnal house of misery and 
death, all brought about as a natural result of violating 
God's laws, physical and moral. Then consider what 
the world, nations, communities, and individuals might 
and would be if all God's laws were known, loved and 
obeyed ! It would be heaven on earth. There are some 
who even now enjoy this blessedness, "because they have 
respect unto the law of God." The w r hole 119th Psalm 
illustrates what God's law can do for those who keep it, 
and also what it will do, in the way of penalty, for those 
who trample it under their feet. God is back of all law 
whose natural penalty is God's testimony against sin. 

Let us glance for a moment into the life after death 
and observe what the law of God, as the consequence of 
well or of ill-doing, has for the souls of men in their 
spiritual bodies. There as here, moral law is in full force, 
but environment is greatly changed. At death the spirit- 



LAW OF NATURAL CONSEQUENCES. 287 

ual body, which was the real man, not only quits its physi- 
cal tenement, but it leaves all earthly and physical things 
behind. Only the spirit itself and character remain. 
Kings and peasants stand alike after death before God. 
The rich and the poor then meet together. Outward 
earthly conditions are nothing. 

In that state spirits mingle with spirits, and they know 
one another even as they are known. Language, con- 
sidered as vocalization is not needed; for spirits read as 
by intuition, or spiritual vision, the thoughts and moral 
states of all with whom they mingle. There is no hiding 
of one's self under false pretenses there as men do here. 
All self-deception, hypocrisy and vain pretense are 
stripped off, and every one sees himself and is seen of 
others, as he is seen of God. 

In these circumstances companionship is not, as it 
often is here, an unnatural and forced union, but is ac- 
cording to real likeness and moral affinity. Those who 
knew each other here and were closely associated may 
meet there ; but whether they shall remain together, or 
soon separate, will depend on mental and spiritual char- 
acteristics. The good will choose the good, and that type 
of goodness which adheres in themselves, for their com- 
panions. The wicked will do the same. Character is 
the great gulf between heaven and hell that cannot be 
passed over. 

In that world, as in this, the principle of causality 
holds sway. Sin and misery, holiness and happiness, 
stand to each other in the relation of cause and effect. 
In that world where there are no shams or hiding places, 
the natural consequence of selfishness on the one hand 
and of benevolence on the other, are seen and felt as they 
are not here. The righteous are inconceivably blessed, 



288 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

and the wicked, continuing so, are cursed, self cursed 
beyond the power of words to express. The garment of 
self-righteousness is stripped off. Conscience like an 
electric wire is alive and becomes a source of torture. 
Reason, memory and reflection upon what was, and might 
have been, is the undying worm. What awful disap- 
pointment often comes to human souls by the law of 
natural consequences when they enter the spiritual world 
and begin to see things as they are, and not as they 
imagined them to be ! 

And yet may not character change from good to bad 
and from bad to good, and so condition change as char- 
acter changes in the world of spirits, much as it does in 
the world of sense? Of one thing we may be sure; that 
if character should ever change, then condition must 
change also. And I am unable to conceive of moral be- 
ings placed in such environment as to make choice, good 
or bad, naturally impossible. This we do know from the 
sacred Word, that angels, somewhere in the past, kept 
not their first estate, but fell into sin, became rebels 
against God, and so became devils, and fell under the 
curse of God's self-executive law. If angels may fall, I 
see no good reason why spirits that go to the unseen 
world unprepared may not repent of their wickedness, 
turn to the Lord and trust in His proffered mercy 
through Jesus Christ. If, as I have tried to show in the 
chapter on the Intermediate State, the offers of the Gos- 
pel are co-extensive with Christ's mediatorial reign, this 
must be so, and, on this ground there is hope, but not 
certainty for the final restitution of the whole human race. 

This much, however, must be conceded, that if those 
who go in their sins into the future world, do not truly 
repent and turn from selfishness unto God and seek His 



LAW OF NATURAL CONSEQUENCES. 



289 



favor and blessing, there is nothing before them but 
spiritual death, which is the opposite of spiritual life. As 
for everlasting misery in such cases, if indeed, such cases 
are to exist, I should hope that sin and separateness from 
God, might in time, either induce repentance or so wear 
out the mind, destroy memory, conscience and conscious- 
ness, that the soul might, at last, as a fearful alternative, 
fall back into a state of practical non-existence. 

But, should any or all who leave this world unrecon- 
ciled to God, subsequently, by repentance and faith, 
avail themselves of the offers of Divine grace, and come 
back into harmony with God's moral law and be blessed, 
let no one think for a moment that because they are 
saved, nothing has been lost, eternally lost. Every sin 
here or there weakens character, weakens the whole 
mind, and produces evil effects from which there is no 
full recovery. Multitudes of saved souls are by no means 
now, and never will be w r hat they might and would have 
been had they always lived according to the law and will 
of God. And so, if they should go into the spirit world 
filled with selfishness and sin, and should in time repent 
and turn to God and be saved, they would yet be spirit- 
ually crippled through all eternity. They could never 
recover what sin had taken from them. At least the 
scars, caused by sin, would remain forever. 

This view of eternal loss, consequent upon transgres- 
sion, is clearly and fearfully presented by Professor Hux- 
ley in his Lay sermons. Time wasted never returns ; 
opportunities lost are lost forever ; God Himself could not 
bring them back. The loss that sin produces is eternal 
loss of being and of well-being. The natural conse- 
quences of wrong-doing are so fearful and irreparable as 
to put a new and terrible meaning into the Biblical de- 



290 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

scriptions of future punishment. Those who make sin a 
trifle know not the law of God nor the nature of sin. 
They trifle with eternal consequences. 

I can only add that God, in Jesus Christ, is love ; that 
His heart is on the side of all moral beings that He has 
ever made, wherever they may be, and that He will do 
them all the good they are willing to receive at His hand. 
Yet, He will never set aside human freedom. All who 
will can be saved ; and for those who will not, there is no 
hope, either in this life or in that which is to come. 

A fourth objection, which must be reserved for the 
next chapter, is that the view of natural consequences 
here advocated appears to deny the doctrine of miracles, 
or of supernatural intervention. 

One final word of hope for those who die in sin. I 
have represented that in the spirit world the soul's en- 
vironment will be changed. The old temptations of the 
flesh are thrown off, and light from God shines with won- 
derful clearness. As a consequence, the sinner's reason 
will be enlightened, his conscience will be aroused, and, 
for a time, the soul may sink into almost despair, and its 
misery will be fearful. But this very state of mind is a 
ground, not of discouragement but of hope. It is the 
soul's conviction of sin, its repentance, and its effort to 
return to God ; and is, therefore, not the penalty of hell, 
so much as it is the entrance through God's appointed 
doorway into heaven. It is not anguish of soul in the 
spirit world, but indifference there, as here, that is most 
to be feared. 



THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 



29I 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL 
IN THE PROBLEM. 

In the preceding chapter on The Law of Natural 
Consequences as illustrated in government, human and 
Divine, the generally accepted supernatural or miracu- 
lous element in human history, and in Scripture repre- 
sentation, was designedly omitted ; not because it was 
unimportant or out of place there, but because it was 
entitled to more of prominence and space than could be 
given it in that connection. 

We have seen in a general way that natural laws, physi- 
cal and moral, are uniform in their operations, and are 
self-executive, each system by Divine order inflicting its 
own penalty and bestowing its own reward; so that to- 
gether, they constitute what is called the Government of 
God. 

The question now to be studied is : Are there super- 
natural or miraculous exceptions to this rule of uni- 
formity? If so, and if they are of frequent occurrence, 
then they are of great historic and practical value to the 
religious world, and must prove an important factor in 
the problem of Human Destiny. 

Obviously the first step to be taken is that of definition. 
We often hear people representing that the world every- 
where is now full of miracles ; that the transformations of 
springtime, that the turning of a soul from sin to God, 



292 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



that physical life and death, and that the whole cause of 
spiritual progress on earth — are all of them miraculous. 
Persons who talk in this loose way have no clear idea of 
what a real miracle must be, and so cannot be reasoned 
with on that subject. 
What is a miracle? 

The words supernatural and miraculous are synony- 
mous terms, signifying something that is above natural 
law, something that sets aside the operations of natural 
law, and substitutes instead the direct and causative in- 
terference of God ; and such an interference as is regu- 
lated by no law known or unknown to man. If any law 
whatever is involved in a sense that implies direct or 
secondary cause, then, that event whatever it be is nat- 
ural and not supernatural. Nothing can be a miracle 
which does not completely set aside or suspend the opera- 
tion of natural law. 

Many things are very wonderful and inexplicable that 
are no more supernatural than is the rainbow or an au- 
tumn forest. Nothing is to be pronounced a miracle 
because, for the present, it cannot be explained on natural 
grounds. It must be of such a character as to be neces- 
sarily produced by the direct and immediate hand of 
God, and by means of no law or order of sequence what- 
ever. Such an event, could it be proven to be such, 
would be a miracle ; but the proof is necessary to an in- 
telligent declaration. I do not deny the fact of miracles ; 
they are certainly possible with God. Indeed, they are 
often supported by strong probability; but probability 
is not proof, and conclusive evidence must be had to 
convince any thoughtful person that natural law, or its 
operation, has been set aside by the miraculous hand of 
God. I cannot accept the argument of Hume against, 



THE NATURAL AXD THE SUPERNATURAL. 293 

not so much the fact of miracles, as against the possi- 
bility of proving them to be such, even if they do take 
place. His point is, that a miracle is so very improba- 
ble that any amount of evidence that the miracle did take 
place is more likely to be mistaken than that the miracle 
was genuine. There is weight in the argument, but it is 
not conclusive, except to the extent that the clearest and 
strongest evidence possible must be had to establish the 
fact that a real miracle has actually occurred ; and this, 
because the antecedent probability is against miracles. 
Science knows and can know nothing of them. 

Having thus defined the supernatural, and indicated 
the nature of the proof demanded, and the difficulty of 
obtaining it, I come now to say that, in early times no 
such distinction between the natural and the supernatural 
as has here been given was recognized, or probably even 
thought of. Things to the people of those days w 7 ere 
what they seemed to be; and with some it is so now. 
The age of true scientific research had not yet dawned 
upon the world. That began to appear with the coming 
in of the Renaissance, at which time the world began to 
awake from the sleep of many centuries, and to inquire 
earnestly into the ways and works and truths of God. 
Before that all things remained as they were, and one 
generation accepted the ideas of the preceding one with- 
out the trouble of asking questions. A miracle was a. 
miracle. The natural, as clearly distinguished from the 
supernatural, was an undreamt dream. Men believed in 
miracles as easily, and without question, as they believed: 
in any series of natural events. They believed that thev 
happened, that w r as all. If a miracle w r ere declared to 
have taken place, no matter where or how or what it 
was, there was no one to question the statement, and so 



294 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

it passed current; and, if it were very wonderful, — the 
more so the better, — it went into history. There are 
parts of the world to-day where essentially the same state 
of things exists. 

Now, it was both natural and sure, that among such 
people as I have described, and there were but few ex- 
ceptions, declared miracles would be superabundant. 
And, indeed, they were ; but, in those days they were not 
called miracles, much less supernatural events. They 
were simply wonders, that men delighted to see and talk 
about but not to question or explain. 

Read the ancient classics, Greek and Roman, and ob- 
serve how continuously, and with apparent thoughtless- 
ness great writers, like Homer, for example, will string 
one supernatural event after another, ascribing them to 
their mythologic gods or heroes, never questioning the 
truth of their own reports, or doubting for a moment 
that they would be accepted without question by a cred- 
ulous people, and become to them an inspiration to great 
endeavor. In the lowest depths of paganism as it has 
been in the most of Asia, and is now in Africa, super- 
naturalism abounds. 

It cannot be denied that the sacred Scriptures, es- 
pecially the Old Testament, following the prevailing ideas 
of all the world, contain, among other narratives of super- 
natural things that have the look of strong probability, 
some marvelous statements of miraculous import that 
credulity itself can hardly accept on the sort of testi- 
mony that stands back of them. I instance the case of 
the "Three Worthies," as they are called, who are re- 
ported in the book of Daniel to have been thrown into a 
great fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than it w r as 
wont to be heated ; and that these men were seen walking 



THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 295 

about in that awful flame of melting heat for, we know 
not how long, and that they then came out of this furnace 
without injury, and without even the smell of fire on their 
garments. This statement rests entirely on the book of 
Daniel, which, it is now claimed, was written hundreds 
of years later than it purports to be, and which is evi- 
dently more a book of history, written in symbols than 
it is of prophecy. For one, I should want better evi- 
dence than this, before I could accept the recorded won- 
der as more than emblematic, figurative, pictorial 
or parabolical representation of what the miracle 
is said to be. And I should have to reason about the 
story of Jonah ; that of the sun standing still in the 
heavens at the command of Joshua; the distinct verbal 
articulation of Baalam's ass; the swimming of a solid 
piece of iron on the water, and possibly some others in 
much the same way. The writers spoke after the man- 
ner, and according to the common belief of their own 
day. Their words were human, but there was a divine 
truth underneath the words which the imagery was meant 
to emphasize, and which should not be lost even if the 
imagery be not according to literal facts. 

The reported miracles of Christ come under an entirely 
different rule of interpretation. Christ was wholly ex- 
ceptional and unique. Whether His mighty works, which 
took place as represented, were actually supernatural or 
in accord with some occult natural law known as yet 
only to God, will be considered with other similar cases 
in a moment. What I have here to say is, that Christ 
came into the world in fulfillment of clear prophecy as 
both the Son of God and the Son of Man. He came to 
be the world's Redeemer, and He came, not as He was 
generally expected to come, in kingly splendor, but as an 



296 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



obscure peasant. It was natural and necessary, there- 
fore, in that age, that His personality and authority 
should be attested by some superhuman, and yet benev- 
olent manifestation of power that should be revealed in 
the presence of all the people. This was done. No one 
questioned the facts as reported ; and His mighty works, 
in addition to what He was and said, confirmed both the 
representations that were made of Him, and His mission 
as the Saviour of the world. For such reasons one can 
believe essentially, though not in every detail, that mar- 
velous things did take place as reported. The facts 
themselves are conceded. 

Returning again to miracles of the common sort, that 
have been reported in such vast numbers, one naturally 
asks after their origin. Why has the world been so 
crazy for miracles? Ignorance is one cause. The more 
ignorant a people are found to be the more eager they 
are for miracles. Superstition is another cause. Give to 
people a religion that is based, not on solid facts, but 
which is full of vague and marvelous things, and let them 
surrender themselves to its demands, and they will hun- 
ger and thirst after wonders to satisfy their superstitious 
propensities. 

Others believe in the supernatural for traditional rea- 
sons, The fathers told the great wonders to their chil- 
dren, and to their children's children, and so the stories 
grew, and a sort of halo surrounded them and made 
them sacred. This is the great secret of the enduring 
power of Brahminism and other Oriental religions, in 
which the adoration of ancestors form so large a part. 
But Orientalists are not the only people who cling to the 
supernatural for essentially the same, or similar reasons. 

With still another and better class of believers "in the 



THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 297 

supernatural, the imagination, that creative and highest 
power of the human soul, is largely responsible. It has 
been observed that men of great imagination and genius 
are apt to be superstitious, and to see wonders where 
common people see nothing. Men, if they can, like to 
build castles and fill them with ghosts and other marvels. 
A perverted and diseased imagination is sure to find and 
parade the supernatural. Children, our American In- 
dians, and all uncultured tribes of men lean towards the 
miraculous and find what they seek. Among recent 
writers of wild imagination, the author of "She" stands 
prominent. Men who are themselves like Rider Hag- 
gard, half inspired and half crazed, are able to produce 
the same effect on others, and so the disease becomes 
contagious. 

Happily, the traditional and morbid belief in the super- 
natural that once was almost universal, is now being 
shaken, and is beginning to pass away. The light of 
modern science has corrected many of the errors, and 
modified or dissipated many of the opinions of former 
times. The great underlying truths of all the ages which 
may have been clothed more or less in garbs of fiction are 
as abiding as the everlasting hills ; but the garments 
which they may have worn will be exchanged for more 
becoming ones, better suited to our times. The whole 
argument from miracles is less valued and insisted upon 
now than it was formerly. 

Many things that once were held to be supernatural 
are now fully explained on natural principles. And 
many of the inventions of modern skill and science, those 
for example in the department of electricity, which seems 
natural enough to us, would have been supernatural to 
our fathers of even one hundred years ago. The field for 



298 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



the miraculous is constantly narrowing, and the time may 
come when the belief in supernatural events will be 
exchanged for such scientific explanations as shall bring 
all, or most of them, into harmony with God's otherwise 
uniform modes of operation. 

This brings me to the question: Is anything in the 
whole universe of God, when rightly understood, super- 
natural? Certainly the universe itself and all that be- 
longs to it is natural, was created on natural principles 
and according to natural methods. Law and order are 
perfectly natural, and the opposite would be most un- 
natural. Life, and the way of coming into life and of per- 
petuating it is natural. Death is no less natural than 
life; continued life after death for moral beings, is quite 
as natural as was the life before death in this world. The 
soul's condition in the great hereafter is determined and 
fixed by the operations of natural law. All truth is nat- 
ural ; changes of moral character in this world and be- 
yond are all brought about by natural processes. The 
ordering of Divine Providence is no more nor less than 
the bringing into operation of those laws which God has 
established for that purpose. The spirit of God comes 
into contact with, and enters into the spirits of men as an 
enlightening, guiding power ; but it is all done on natural 
principles. The new birth of a soul into the Divine life 
is just as natural as was that of the body into physical life. 
Indeed, to God, one thing is as natural as another. 
Nothing happens which, in His sight can be accident, or 
out of the great system of order. Even sin is not super- 
natural, for it too, follows the principle of natural 
causality. Indeed, the very things which men call mira- 
cles, could we see them as they are, and as God sees and 
produces them, would, in all probability, be found to 



THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 299 

come about by the operation of some law that we do not 
yet understand. 

If God determines here and there to put forth His 
hand and do some things outside of the common course 
of nature, as we see it, it is almost certain that He does 
it on some natural principle or law that, in given circum- 
stances, would always secure the same result. Such action 
then is natural and not miraculous, unless the whole uni- 
verse and all its operations, as some of late claim, are 
to be regarded as a series of stupendous miracles. But 
such an idea, besides being improbable, would destroy 
the very conception of a miracle for which so many are 
contending. If all this be true, where then, in all the 
operations of nature, and of Divine movement, is there 
any place for the really supernatural? 

God's presence and power are none the less real and 
operative in any series of events that may seem to us 
marvellous or otherwise because they are produced, not 
apart from, but by the operation of, some principle of 
order which we call law. Law and order are the agencies 
or instruments by means of which the creative and evo- 
lutionary processes of the universe are carried forward. 
It is not abstract law that works such infinite results, but 
God Himself, producing them by means of natural prin- 
ciples or laws that He has established for that purpose. 
Between this view and that of a certain class of scientists 
who see only cold law, and recognize no infinite moral 
Being back of law, and working through law for the car- 
rying out of His benevolent purposes, there can be but 
little in common. No, the presence of God, and of His 
all-pervading power, wisdom and love in the movements 
of the universe is ever to be recognized and made em- 
phatic by Christian teachers. God works through law, 



300 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



that is to say, through established principles and 
methods ; but it is God, and not law, that we are to revere 
and worship. 

When Christ healed the sick, opened the eyes of the 
blind and raised the dead, it may, for aught we know, all 
have taken place on some natural principle that applies 
in such cases, but which no man can yet explain, much 
less employ. 

In our day very remarkable cases of sudden healing 
are said, on what appears to be good authority, to take 
place, and frequently under circumstances that seem 
miraculous; but there is no miracle in them. We shall 
know 7 more of these occult operations and laws as time 
and experiments go on. In former days the visitations of 
spirits to men from the unseen world were regarded as 
supernatural, but are not so regarded now, and should 
not be, any more than the visit of one friend to another 
should be considered supernatural. The fact of such 
visitations is attested by a great number of reliable wit- 
nesses, and there seems to be no mistake about it. 

If we glance for a moment at the ways by which some 
of the so-called miracles may be explained, we may find 
a cue for the explanation of others, if not for all that are 
said to have taken place. Observe : I am not denying 
that the things occurred substantially as they were re- 
ported to have done ; but this, when admitted, does not 
prove that they were miracles. Take an illustration from 
Chemistry. Here is a man who has taken some deadly 
poison, and he ought, by the operation of natural law, to 
die. A physician is at hand and gives him promptly an 
antidote for that poison, and the man does not die. All 
this is in perfect harmony with natural law. When one 
law is modified in its action by the intervention of an- 



THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 



301 



other there is no miracle. In some such way many unex- 
pected and apparently supernatural things may be ex- 
plained. Take another case from the department of 
Physics. As regards physical bodies large and small, 
rest or motion is equally natural ; so that if one body is 
set in motion by the impingement of another, it ought to 
continue that motion forever, and would but for the 
coming in of some other law to counteract the law of 
continued motion. The friction of the atmosphere, or 
coming into contact with some other body, may bring 
this moving one, contrary to the first law of motion, into 
a state of rest. Again, bodies set in motion should move 
in a straight line. This is the law; but a lineal move- 
ment may be changed into a curvilineal one by the at- 
traction of some other body perhaps many millions of 
miles away. In this case neither law has complete opera- 
tion ; one limits and modifies the other. Our planetary 
system is a beautiful illustration. 

These are only specimens to show that what often ap- 
pears to be a violation, or setting aside of some law of 
nature, is not a supernatural result, but is one natural 
operation modified by another. In some corresponding 
way, it is more than likely that all, or nearly all, of the so- 
called supernatural occurrences of the past and present 
may be explained. The operations of natural law that 
God has ordained for the orderly government of His 
universe, explain them. 

Even resuscitations from death itself, w r hich sometimes 
take place, may possibly be explained as the result of 
natural causes not yet cearly revealed. When a spirit 
leaves the body, what we call death ensues ; but there is 
no miracle. Death is as natural a thing as life, and we 
know that human beings are ever passing from one state 



302 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

to the other. Suppose that some spirit after leaving the 
body according to natural law should return, as the spirit 
of Jairus's daughter is said to have done, and reanimate 
it again ; why should its return be necessarily more mir- 
aculous than was its departure? It is less common, but 
that proves nothing. 

Many cases are on record where persons to all appear- 
ances die, and yet sometimes days afterwards the spirit 
returns to the body, reanimates it, and life goes on years 
afterwards. In Munich, Bavaria, and I suppose else- 
where, they have a law that all who die shall be taken to 
a large central room whose walls are clear glass and there 
be suitably draped, poised, and for one, two or more days 
be exposed to public view. This is a place of favorite 
resort, and at any time one may see three or four, and I 
have seen eight or ten bodies so exposed at once ; each 
having a hand or foot connected by a small cord to a bell 
in an adjoining room, where a guard is always on watch 
for the ringing of a bell that the least motion at the other 
end of the cord would produce. There have been bell- 
ringings, but I cannot say how many or how often. 

We have frequent cases of trance, — like the well-known 
one of Rev. Wm. Tennent, and, I suppose of Paul also, 
when his spirit went to the third heavens, — where the 
parties seem to die, but after a time the spirit returns and 
life goes on as before. In all this there is no miracle. 
Why may not the resuscitations in Christ's time possibly 
have been similar cases. Is not this less improbable than 
that the natural order of the universe should have been 
set aside? If God guides spirits into the body and then 
out of it by natural law, why may He not, in the same 
way, guide them back again? 

This line of study, based only on probability, has not 



THE NATURAL AND THE SUPERNATURAL. 3O3 

been pursued with any expectation that it is to be the 
last word on the subject, or that it will satisfy Christian 
people of strong conservative and traditional tendencies. 
I am not striving for such a result, but only to present 
thoughts on these great subjects as the Lord of all life and 
truth has given me to understand them. Differences of 
opinion must exist here on earth and throughout eter- 
nity; but charity or love among the children of a com- 
mon Father should never fail. 

I know and feel the difficulties with which the view 1 
have taken of the supernatural is beset, and therefore I 
express myself tentatively and with hesitation. My justi- 
fication is that the old view is involved in still greater 
difficulties ; and I find myself in a position "where I must 
say nothing, or take the side of the greater probability. 
The question ought to be studied because of its place and 
importance in the public mind, and because, from the 
Christian standpoint, only one side has been fairly 
presented. 

The view here taken of the supernatural is not new, 
or unfamiliar to some of the great names of the Christian 
Church. Bishop Butler, a century and a half ago, in 
the first chapter of his famous "Analogy," says : "There 
may be beings in the universe whose capacities, and 
knowledge, and views may be so extensive as that the 
whole Christian dispensation may to them appear nat- 
ural, i. e., analogous and conformable to God's dealings 
with other parts of His creation ; as natural as the visible 
course of things appear to us." 

This chapter, as its opening sentence indicates, is a 
continuation of the previous one, on the subject of Nat- 
ural Law and Government, human and Divine, in the 
great problem. The course of study there pursued led to 



304 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



the conclusion that, as moral beings under Divine gov- 
ernment, we are in this life, and also in the life beyond, 
subject to the Divine law of natural consequences. An 
objection to that view, growing out of alleged super- 
natural action in the case of miracles had to be met, and 
was laid over for the present chapter. I have now at- 
tempted to show that even so-called miracles may not 
be exempt from the operation of natural law; that they 
may be produced, not by God's immediate hand, setting 
aside natural law and acting apart from all law, which 
itself would be a miracle, but in accordance with uniform 
principles which, at present, we do not understand. 

If this view is correct, then the objection falls, and the 
conclusion that all moral beings, in whatever world they 
are, exist and are disposed of under the law of natural 
consequences is confirmed and fortified against success- 
ful attack. If men are under natural law, physical and 
moral, then they are liable to change their relations to 
moral law, and if any do change, as God must always 
wish and encourage them to do, from bad to good, then 
the same law that before inflicted penalty will now, to as 
great an extent as possible, bestow reward. Besides, this 
view as against the old, vindicates the honor of God by 
making Him a Legislator over the human race, and not 
in any true sense their jailer to keep them in prison, not 
so much by the force of natural law as by the force of 
might. God is first of all our Father, and the Upholder 
of law and order in all the universe. 

I had thought of bringing the subject of prayer, and 
the indwelling presence and inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit, into a similar course of study. But this now seems 
needless, as by a parallel line of inquiry, the same conclu- 
sion would be reached, namely, that God answers prayer, 



THE NATURAL AXD THE SUPERNATURAL. 



305 



and bestows the gracious aid of His Spirit, not apart 
from, but in accordance with, and through the operation 
of His own physical, moral and spiritual laws which are 
established for these, and for other great purposes. 

It is not denied that the view here taken reaches into 
the infinite, and is therefore beset with difficulties ; but the 
same objection lies against every hypothesis that ever has 
been or can be adopted to explain the relations of the 
finite and the infinite, of the natural and the supernatural. 



3o6 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



CHAPTER XX. 

CONCLUSION DEFINITELY STATED. 

Having now studied separately the chief factors that 
enter into the great Problem of Final Destiny, and found 
that each points toward the rising sun of a glorious fu- 
ture for the human race, it only remains to converge 
the rays from all sources into a common focus, so as to 
give illumination and distinctness to the final conclusion. 
At this point a reader might naturally expect to find a 
condensed resume of the whole study as contained in the 
preceding chapters, and of the conclusions they severally 
involve. But, on reflection, it would seem that in so 
small a book as this such an abstract, except along one 
or two lines, might better be almost omitted. 

While all the studies have held unfalteringly to the 
fundamental principles of the Christian faith as contained 
in the Scriptures, and as written in the moral natures of 
all men, — the revisal of theological statement, where 
truth and the growing needs of the world demand revisal, 
have been freely suggested and argued. The studies 
themselves, considering the greatness of their subjects, 
have, of necessity, been brief, and, except as to their main 
purpose, incomplete. But I hope that the views of the 
writer have been clearly expressed, and this in the spirit 
of kindness and Christian charity, even where he has 
been obliged to modify or reject some old-time and cher- 
ished theological conclusions. Each subject, — while 



CONCLUSION DEFINITELY STATED. 



3°7 



studied apart by itself and never losing sight of the prob- 
lem to be solved, — has left the facts unshackeled to voice 
themselves; and that voice throughout has been in uni- 
son ; so that the whole investigation has foreshadowed a 
common conclusion which is now to have a more definite 
and positive formulation. That general conclusion is, 
that the creedal and traditional Theory of Final Destiny 
is not sustained, and that almost the reverse of what it 
claims must be true. 

Here the question not unnaturally arises : Why, then, 
did not the author at the commencement of his work an- 
nounce clearly the hypothesis that he meant to establish? 
To this question two answers are freely given. 

First, because to have stated it then would have com- 
mitted the whole course of study to the support of a 
postulate, and so to an ex-parte line of investigation. But 
a second and stronger reason was, because, at that time, 
to speak frankly, no clearly defined harmonizing hy- 
pothesis had come satisfactorily into view. The question 
was an open one, and the study itself was to disclose the 
answer. 

Several points were from the first fully settled ; such as 
these: i. That love is the sum of God's moral character, 
and that, therefore, He does and must do for each mem- 
ber of the human family, — all of them His children and 
He their Father, — everything that infinite wisdom and 
infinite power controlled by perfect love could do to pro- 
mote their highest and eternal well being. 2. That God 
would, therefore, give to every soul born into the world 
and made immortal, not only a possible chance, but the 
very best of opportunities to be saved, so that a favorable 
outcome of existence would, in the end, be far more nat- 
ural and probable than the opposite alternative. 3. That, 



308 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 



on the commonly accepted system of theological belief no 
such opportunity for the great majority of mankind is 
given in this world ; and, that, for this and other reasons, 
the work of God's loving and saving grace must be and 
would be extended into the intermediate state. 4. That 
the doctrine of eternal torment, by positive infliction, as 
taught in the creeds and often preached, could not be lit- 
erally true. 

Points like these were settled from the outset; but, 
separately or together, they did not give a working hy- 
pothesis that solved the problem of Final Destiny; and 
this was what I was earnestly "feeling after if haply I 
might find it." I tested various hypotheses, but found no 
one that served as a key to unlock the whole mystery 
until the general study was approaching completion. 
Then, from all quarters, the solution came into view of 
itself, and with such clearness and fullness as to be more 
than satisfactory. Up till then I had been thinking and 
writing for my own enlightenment, with hardly a thought 
of bringing what was written into public notice. 

The hypothesis here referred to is nothing startling or 
original. It had in subtsance often been thought over; 
and had been seen in print ; but it had never come to me 
in such light and from so many quarters as it was now 
presented. I saw that it satisfied my own needs, that it 
solved my difficulties, that it presented a view that was 
honorable to God, just to man, not hostile to Scripture, 
in accord with reason ; that it was a hypothesis which, if 
adopted, left me standing on middle ground (where I 
prefer to stand), between the extremes of ultra ortho- 
doxy on the one hand, and of ultra radicalism on the 
other. While it compelled me to reject the idea of end- 
less conscious misery as a positive infliction, that would 



CONCLUSION DEFINITELY STATED. 309 

make existence a positive curse, it forbade my full ac- 
ceptance of the Universalists' conclusion as to the sure 
and complete salvation and glorification of all men. Es- 
pecially I could not accept the conclusion of the elder 
Ballou, that all men, regardless of character here, would 
be saved at death, and enter at once into glory. Nor 
could I accept the doctrine of final restitution, that with 
certainty brings even the worst of mankind finally into 
a state of purity and eternal blessedness in heaven. All 
this is possible but not certain. Future awards, whether 
of pleasure or pain, I saw must flow naturally and neces- 
sarily from the moral state, good or bad, of the persons 
involved. 

My hypothesis then for the solution of the problem 
of Final Destiny is found in God's law of universal order, 
and in what that law necessitates ; in a modified sense of 
that term, it is the Law of Natural Consequences. To 
explain, I must glance backward for a moment. 

We have seen that human governments and the Divine 
Government are so entirely different from each other that 
we cannot reason extensively from one to the other. 
They have no common analogies. What we call the gov- 
ernment of God is natural or God-appointed law, whose 
operations can never, in any true sense, be set aside. 
God's laws are so self-executive and self-protective that 
they cannot be overthrown, or call for any outside sup- 
port or interference; they are made to administer and 
protect themselves. Such is the Divine constitution and 
order of what we call nature, physical and moral. 

The laws of the universe, so far as we understand them, 
fall, as was seen, under two great divisions, namely: 
physical law which relates to matter, and moral law which 
relates to moral character, good and bad. If any one 



310 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

doubts that physical law is self-executive and self-protec- 
tive, he has but to set himself against it and find out his 
mistake ; for he will suffer and not the law, which is re- 
sistless. Ocean waves and the tide of time roll on, and 
it is not in the power of the finite universe to change 
this order of physical nature. 

What all men know and admit to be true in the whole 
realm of physical law is found to be just as true in the 
department of moral law, which is no less uniform, 
changeless and self-executive than is physical law. Moral 
law, like physical, has its own rewards for obedience 
and penalties for disobedience; and these follow in all 
cases with absolute certainty and necessity. What we 
call repentance means a turning from the violation of 
moral law into conformity with it; and by forgiveness, 
that God trusts us and takes us into the conscious en- 
joyment of His favor. As physical and moral law differ 
in their nature so their rewards and penalties differ. 

The penalty of violated moral law is moral disorder; 
it is sin, guilt and spiritual death. The violator is out 
of harmony with himself, like a discordant instrument; 
he is out of harmony with his fellow beings, with truth 
and duty, with the moral universe and with God. In pro- 
portion to the extent of such disorder and violation of 
law man is morally dwarfed and degraded ; the intellect 
is darkened ; the will is bewildered, the heart is dis- 
ordered, and the whole moral man is tending toward 
brutehood. Nothing can save such an one, not from 
eternal physical torment, but from eternal spiritual death, 
except return to a state of obedience to moral law from 
which he has broken away. Such a return, could it be 
secured, would save the greatest sinner in the universe. 
The whole effort of the Gospel of the blessed God to save 



CONCLUSION DEFINITELY STATED. 



311 



lost men, is to bring them into harmony with God's 
moral and spiritual law. When that is accomplished they 
are saved. 

By this I do not mean that they are restored to what 
they might have been had they always been conformed to 
moral law. That is impossible, and, in this sense, sin 
receives eternal punishment; it is eternal loss. But in 
all cases a return to the spirit of obedience and duty to 
God as moral law requires, is to escape from the curse 
of moral law, so as to enjoy its protection and blessing. 
In that moral attitude the soul is once more open to the 
indwelling and guidance of God's Spirit whom sin had 
shut away. 

This view of the moral law of God, and man's relation 
to it, applies certainly to what we see and know in the 
present life. And, what I insist upon is, that what ap- 
plies in this world, applies in all worlds where moral 
beings exist. Principles are eternal. Moral law as God 
ordained it blesses or curses accordingly as it is obeyed 
or disobeyed. 

The hypothesis of Natural and Necessary Conse- 
quences does not stand by itself alone. While it is 
brought more distinctly into prominence by the chapters 
on that subject, yet ever}' study in the series looks in the 
same direction and sustains the same conclusion. They 
all combine, by taking away one support after another, 
to overthrow the Creedal doctrine of endless punishment 
as a direct Divine infliction, apart from and beyond the 
operation of natural law; and also to uphold the hy- 
pothesis of natural consequences. Indeed, when the 
other supports are gone, this conclusion only remains and 
must be accepted. I should have no interest in seeking 
to overthrow the old view if there were not a better one 



312 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

at hand to take its place. Every chapter lends its aid 
directly and indirectly to the hypothesis of Natural Con- 
sequences. 

The personality, the Tri-Unity and the moral character 
of God, give assurances that God will do all that infinite 
wisdom, power and love can do to bring all men into 
harmony with His righteous law. The double nature of 
man, and the conflict between his higher and lower 
natures, make certain the conclusion that man's higher 
nature will finally prevail. The Bible was inspired of 
God to lead men out of darkness into marvelous light, 
and its end will be secured. Immortal life was bestowed 
on man for his well-being, and not to make him eternally 
miserable. Sin was permitted for wise ends, and when 
those ends are secured it must cease to exist. Christ 
came into the world to save men's lives, not to destroy 
them ; not to condemn the world, but that the world, 
through Him, might be saved. Christ's atonement re- 
veals God's heart to men, and His purpose to secure their 
final salvation. Christ's mediatorial reign makes it cer- 
tain that those who have no fair chance to be saved in 
this life will have further opportunity in the continued life 
beyond. The historic creeds, so far as they bear on the 
question of eternal punishment, must be greatly revised 
or set aside as untrue. Eternal Hope that "glows im- 
mortal in the human breast," is not doomed to utter dis- 
appointment. Jesus' words on future punishment — if they 
have as they should, in view of all the facts, the mildest 
and not the severest meaning put upon them — do not 
antagonize His own declaration that He came to give 
life, and to give it more abundantly. Our Lord's second 
coming, the resurrection and judgment, rightly viewed, 



CONCLUSION DEFINITELY STATED. 



313 



look towards and not from the conclusion that, in the 
end,, moral harmony is to prevail in the universe. 

All these lines of study confirm and illustrate the gen- 
eral conclusion that the law of natural consequences, as 
God administers it, must determine the problem of 
Final Destiny by establishing in the end, harmony in the 
place of discord, in this world and beyond. 

We are now prepared to take one look ahead and see 
what w r e shall see. The souls of men, on the death of 
the body, go at once, all of them, good and bad alike, to 
the place of departed spirits, called in Scripture Sheol, 
Hades or Paradise. We have there two, if not three 
classes of moral beings. One class consists of those who, 
by the aid of gracious influences which they enjoyed and 
improved in the world, were enabled to live so far in ac- 
cordance with the claims of God's moral and spiritual 
system of law and order that their characters are formed 
into the Divine likeness. These pass almost immedi- 
ately into the Higher Heavens, where they become asso- 
ciated with congenial redeemed spirits. 

Another very large class, embracing doubtless the 
great proportion of the human race, enter the spirit world 
bearing mixed characters. They come from all ages and 
from all lands. Some have had many advantages, and 
others next to none at all. Some are very good but im- 
perfect, while others are very bad and with but few vir- 
tues. Their environment has now almost wholly 
changed ; but their opportunities for being saved, that is 
to say, for being brought into harmony with the law and 
spirit of God, are essentially the same there as they were 
here, except that they are probably much greater. Christ 
and His Gospel are the same. 

Doubtless, many who are almost in the kingdom soon 



3I4 THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTINY. 

enter it, and pass on to a higher life. Others who, at 
death were far from God, and lost, — but not hopelessly, — 
in sin, become soon awfully sensible of their condition. 
They see their mistake ; conscience is awakened from its 
dreamy sleep ; remorse takes hold of them ; they feel their 
ill-desert and unworthiness ; and, for a time, perhaps, 
they have no hope. This distressed state of soul our or- 
thodox theory claims to be a part of the soul's eternal 
punishment ; while in fact, it is a sure sign of the begin- 
ning of repentance or change of mind, that, by the loving 
kindness of man's Saviour is bringing him back into 
conformity with God's law of love, which, attained is itself 
salvation. 

Just such experiences we often meet with in this world, 
where men, from a sense of sin and of their lost condi- 
tion, are for a time driven almost to despair. John Bun- 
yon, and thousands of others like him are examples. 
We regard such experiences as exceptionally hopeful, 
because they show that a sense of sin and the work of 
repentance are taking deep hold of their hearts and are 
producing there a radical change. The same experience 
in the spirit world should have the same interpretation. 
It is moral law T — the sword of the spirit — doing its saving 
work of leading souls to God. 

In consideration of these, and all the facts contained in 
the preceding chapters, I am prepared to believe confi- 
dently that the great proportion, if not all of this class, 
will ultimately return to God ; so that they shall enter, 
all enter, into such measure of eternal life as the po- 
tentialities of their souls shall enable them to enjoy. 

There are different measures of soul stature in heaven 
as there are here. Some are great and some are small. 
There are also different tastes and adaptabilities ; and 



CONCLUSION DEFINITELY STATED. 3 I 5 

there are different spheres or classes in heaven as there 
are on earth; and each spirit finds its class, its natural 
companions, and its congenial occupations. The law of 
perfect love for each other, and for the blessed lord and 
the eternal Father rules all lives. What, in large part, 
"was lost on earth is gained in heaven ;" and God is over 
all blessed forever. 

It was intimated a little back that possibly three classes 
of human souls might enter the spirit world. It is cer- 
tainly possible that some go there, or become after going 
there, so debauched by trampling on the moral law and 
love of God, and by giving themselves wholly to sinful 
indulgences as to become irredeemable, in any true sense 
of the word redemption. I say it may and probably will 
be so. 

What, then, would be the condition of such souls? 
Would they be in great anguish and despair? No. 
Would they be anxious to escape from their condition 
and go with the blest? No. Would they live on forever? 
Probably. Would their existence be to them a curse 
and not a conscious blessing? No. What, then, if such 
beings exist, would they do and be? I answer, they 
would still have their reward. What they would desire 
above all else is animal, sensual, selfish gratification ; and 
this they would be permitted to enjoy. Such low spirits 
would group together in some dark corner of the universe 
and find such enjoyment as they might and could obtain. 
Their punishment would, as Augustine and other of the 
early Fathers held (as already quoted), consist, not so 
much in conscious misery, as in loss of being and of high 
enjoyment. And yet, what they have they want, and 
would exchange for nothing higher out of their own line 
of selfish loves. Will not such an existence at last wear 



3i6 



THE PROBLEM OF FIXAL DESTIXY. 



out and cease to be? Possibly. Does God hate such 
souls? Is He angry at them? Are they objects of His 
wrath? No. God is love. He pities them, and would 
do them infinite good if they would let Him, but they will 
not. Their existence cannot be called an unmitigated 
curse, for they enjoy it. But it is eternal penalty because 
of eternal separation from God and from spiritual good, 
and so is eternal loss, all the result of violated moral law, 
which itself is alienation from God and spiritual death. 

To human view there are people living in the world to- 
day, thousands of them, who seem to belong to this class 
of almost hopeless ones. I have not now in mind the 
poor, ignorant, miserable people who live in pagan or 
semi-pagan darkness, and who have had almost no light 
or opportunity to be saved. For such there is hope. 
Their day of privilege and opportunity will yet come ; 
and, as they have never been hardened against Gospel 
truth, when it comes to them in the other life, they may 
see and gladly follow it. 

There are those in so-called Christian lands who have 
deliberately separated themselves from all that is good 
in this world, from God and all that represents Him on 
earth. They live wholly unto themselves. They have 
given themselves over to work iniquity. They are dead 
in trespasses and sins. They will lie, cheat, steal, rob and 
murder if they have a chance. The only thing they fear 
is human law. When such people die is there any hope 
for them in the other life? That depends. If there is 
yet any seed-principle of reform left in them, any con- 
science, any' desire in their hearts for a better life, then 
there is something to appeal to, and this gives hope. 
There are very few so utterly hardened that nothing 
good remains. Prison convicts are often open and yield- 



CONCLUSION DEFINITELY STATED. 



317 



ing to loving Christian sympathy and appeal. Why 
should it not be so in the other world, where tempta- 
tions are less, and good influences are so much greater? 

Some of this class, possibly not a few, may never be 
saved. All men are free moral agents, otherwise they 
could have no moral character ; and God always respects 
human freedom. If they are not saved their condition 
in the spirit world will be relatively what it is here. The 
two worlds are not so very unlike as many suppose. 
Here bad people flock together, and talk over and re- 
joice in, their own evil ways. It will be so in the other 
world, where every such spirit has its reward. Wicked- 
ness gives a sort of pleasure. It is not to hardened souls 
all positive misery. It does not make existence an in- 
finite curse. What all but themselves would consider 
hell is their delight. 

But, after all, I do cherish some hope that the time will 
come in the great future when every moral being who 
shall then consciously exist, will accept and carry out in 
life, as he sees it, the law of love, which is the central 
principle of God's moral universe. But I hope trem- 
blingly. 

Further detail might be interesting but it is needless, 
and would do harm should it divert attention from the 
main question to side issues. If the hypothesis of Nat- 
ural Consequences, under the operation of God-ap- 
pointed and self-executive moral law, recognizes and up- 
holds the main conclusion of this and of the preceding 
chapters ; and, especially, if it furnishes a rational substi- 
tute for the discarded doctrine of eternal punishment as 
consisting in positive infliction after the manner of hu- 
man governments ; if it illustrates how the principles of 
the Gospel of Christ, and its redemptive work, extend 



3i8 



THE PROBLEM OF FINAL DESTIXY. 



after death into the world of departed spirits, reaching 
and saving millions who were unprepared at death for the 
Kingdom of Heaven; if it supports and defends the 
honor, justice and love of God in His treatment of man- 
kind ; if it gives a broad ground of hope for a struggling 
and disheartened race; if it inspires Christian workers 
with confidence and courage in their efforts to uplift and 
save a sinful and needy world ; — if it does all this, as, to 
my mind it does and must, then, does it not bring 
into distinct view, and make rationally probable, a glori- 
ous solution of the great problem of Final Destiny, which 
was the proposed endeavor of these chapters. 

How does the conclusion and prospective consumma- 
tion to which we have now arrived, if accepted, exalt the 
Creator, and vindicate His wisdom, power and good- 
ness in the creation of the universe, and especially of the 
human race ! How perfectly it satisfies reason, and re- 
sponds to the Divinely created instincts and moral in- 
tuitions of human beings, inspiring them, if anything can, 
with reverence, confidence, love and life ; and awakening 
in them an earnest purpose to live ever in the spirit which 
God Himself illustrates, and into which, as the Scriptures 
teach, He is drawing, and will yet draw, by cords of love, 
His wayward, wandering children back to Himself. 
Such a view of Final Destiny is itself an inspiration ; and 
it should awaken every soul to a life of gratitude, of con- 
secration, of hopeful, self-denying endeavor, and to 
earnest prayer and co-operation with God for the uplift- 
ing and saving of mankind. 

It is not claimed that this great solution of the problem 
of Final Destiny is reached on the basis of actual demon- 
stration. The nature of the subject forbids this. Abso- 
lute certainty on most questions of the understanding and 



CONCLUSION DEFINITELY STATED. 319 

judgment can only be reached through experience. But 
strong probability, which amounts to moral certainty, is 
a sufficient, and often the only basis for rational belief 
and corresponding action; and this, as I confidently 
claim, the preceding studies have established. Let the 
words of Robert Browning, with which he closes his 
poem on "Apparent Failure," be also my conclusion : 

"It's wiser being good than bad; 

It's safer being meek than fierce, 
It's fitter being sane than mad. 

My hope is the sun will pierce 
The thickest cloud earth ever streched; 

That, after last, returns the first, 
Though a wide compass round be fetched; 

That what began best, can't end worst, 
Nor what God blessed once prove accurst." 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: August 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Driva 
Cranberry Township PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 



?0l 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




0 012 059 335 3 



